No leer
by Deokhye
Summary: .-
1. 19-20

Nineteen

Day: 1436; Hour: 15

"I don't think you understand. Or, at least, I'm hoping you don't understand, because I would hate to see someone _that_ stupid in such a position of-"

"Hermione," Justin whispered, but she jerked her arm away from his touch and shoves another finger into the Auror's chest.

"You are out of line-" Auror _whoever_ begins, but Hermione cuts him off with a fake laugh and another raw poke into his sternum.

"And you are _insane_ if you think I'm going to leave you alone for a _second_ before you do something about this!"

The man grabs her arm suddenly, his fingers digging so hard into her wrist she feels the bones might pop. "We still have people we're pulling out of the fucking _mud _, hospital rooms filled with injuries, and a full morgue. We have a-"

"You think I don't know that? Huh? I _know that_! My _friends_ have died today, and throughout this entire _fucking_ war! People I considered my _family_ are in that morgue, so don't you _dare_ preach to me about what we have _lost_!" Hermione screams this in a way that breaks her voice open, splinters the expression on her face, and she hates that she is crying.

"Sir," Justin tries, and Hermione lets him leave his hand on her shoulder now. "First, I suggest you drop her hand before we take this up with Lupin. Second, all we're asking from you is for you to organize all in good health to form a search team. Both of us are already volunteering for it."

The Auror clenched his fist after releasing her, face pulled into disgust. "All decisions on missions are handed down the chain of command. If you want a search team, go get in the line bending the hallways at Mungo's to talk to Lupin."

"Ron Weasley is a good man. He has sacrificed-" Hermione starts, her hands shaking.

"They are all good people. They have all sacrificed. There is a long list of people that are missing. Unless he's got the ability to come back and save us all, he's waiting to be saved with the rest of us."

Because he was not Harry Potter, and she was angry at the darkness in the way she thought it, but all she could feel was callousness.

Day: 1437; Hour: 7

The healer tells her that Lupin has demanded Harry doesn't know about Ron yet. Ron is the exception, the woman tells her, and he knows about the status of the others they have documented so far. _Documented_, and Hermione wonders if the healers have lost their emotions from the war that was so huge it also had the energy to rip through hospital corridors with all the ferocity of a lion.

Ron is at his home, healing, and should be in good health within two weeks. That is their story. That is what makes Hermione want to scream, and vomit, and stay perfectly still all at the same time.

Harry is in much better shape than she had expected. His left arm was in a sling, small scratches lining the right side of his face from temple to jaw, and four broken fingers. There was the tint of a healing balm peeking out from the collar of his  
hospital gown, and a soft orange glow across his ribs came from under the thin fabric. For some reason, she had thought of some horrible disfigured face and body with claw-locked hands, and then she realized that she had lived too long with her  
worst fears. Magic would have him healed in a day, perhaps two. It was the mental damage she was most scared of now.

He took her hand and didn't let it go for an hour, both sitting in silence save their breath and the noise outside the room. He stared at the ceiling and then at her, in her eyes, and for a good fifteen minutes she was afraid to blink. It was like she was scared that he might not find what he needed there if she did.

"I love you." This is the first thing he says, and the tears jet to her eyeballs from the weight in her chest.

She nods for several seconds until she feels that her vocal chords might work, if she tries really hard. "I love you too, Harry. I love you so much."

He apologizes for her not being able to come earlier, but he had forgotten to inform them to let her in until that afternoon. He tells her that he doesn't want to talk about anything that has happened yet, and she irrationally feels the words of  
her anger bubble up inside her. She wants to know why he didn't make sure to get her before the battle, when he has always gotten her in the past, and why she was not good enough for this to him. But it is not the time, and she knows it will not be for a long time now, when there is room for her bitterness over the grief of loss that they all share now.

He does ask her who she has visited and how they are, and when she raises her chin in defiance to anything he has to say when she tells him she has visited Draco Malfoy as well, his answer is not one she is expecting. She tells him that he is fine,  
and looks worriedly at the sudden faraway expression on his face before he lapses into silence once again.

Before she leaves, he speaks up when her hand is on the knob. "Hermione?"

"Yeah?"

"If you see Malfoy again...tell him I'm sorry."

"For what?" She shakes her head in confusion, and he shakes his own in refusal to answer.

"Just tell him."

"Alright."

Day: 1437; Hour: 10

"I know, Hermione. Our organization is non-existent, everything has been blown to ruins. We're not even sure about all the casualties or how many are going to pull out of their injuries, let alone where everyone _is_."

"We still need to find Ron! The others that are missing too, yes, and organize funerals, and comb the area for other casualties, and _everything, I know_. But Ron is out there, waiting for us! I know what it was like to be that person, and I am _sure _that I did not have it as bad as him!"

"I care about Ron too, Hermione. I know the things we have to do. We're trying to reassemble as quickly as we can, and as soon as we do, I plan on creating a rescue mission for Ron and all the others. He is important to us, but everyone else who is missing is important to other people as well-"

"I know that! You're not listening to me! We have enough people, especially now that we-"

"Hermione! We are gathering able people and our resources to form several search teams for everyone that is missing, but we _don't_ have enough people that are able, not performing another duty, and that we know the location of to form a team at this very second! We-"

"Then figure out where they are, Lupin! Ron could be _dying_, and you, and _you_..."

Hermione trails off, because there is a sudden, stark look that overwhelms Lupin's face. Exasperation is there, but there is also something else, more deep and personal that she doesn't know except for the feel of it. Because he is the one in  
charge, who is supposed to be the best at this and to get done what needed to be done. But he couldn't. He couldn't because no one was good enough in war.

"Tell me what to do. I can't sit here. I can't sit here, Lupin, please don't make me." She whispers this, and if she sounds broken, it is nothing he doesn't feel.

"Organize them. Locate the Order members and Auror's who are in a decent health and haven't been assigned anything else. Compile the names and bring them to me."

Day: 1437; Hour 14

Harry is sleeping, so she visits everyone else she has yet to see that day or at all.

Anthony, Tonks, Angelina, and Ernie MacMillan. They are all more positive than she had expected, and if Ron wasn't missing and Neville wasn't lost, she might have also felt that blister of hope. But she could hardly be relieved, not yet. McGonagall  
had already left, along with George and Molly Weasley, and Hagrid. She ventures to Draco's room, and he is glaring at her nearly as soon as she enters, but she expects it and ignores it.

"How did you sleep?"

"I had dreams about deer mating with fish, how do you think I slept?" She scrunches her face. "That's disgusting."

"You're not the one with the mental images. Though they are in thanks to you."

"It's not my fault you have strange sex dreams when you take pain potions, Malfoy."

"They give me too much, that's why." "Tell them not to."

"I _do_."

Hermione looks around for a chair to pull up to his bed, but doesn't find one. She wonders if she happens to be the only one who has stopped in to visit him. His bedside table is empty of cards or candy, and she realizes that she probably _is_.  
Draco has friends, but in the distant sort of way that he talks to people sometimes, and she thinks the only people who put up with his crap are probably Neville and she. Her, now... her.

"You left the ring, I'm guessing." She nods and he nods in return, and she wonders if he has ever managed a 'thank you' in his life.

The silence goes on long enough for her to start fidgeting, and she breaks it with the first solid thing that comes to mind. "I saw Harry last night. He told me to tell you he's sorry."

Draco's tapping thumb stops, and his face realigns into the something she can't place. "Is that so."

"Yes. I don't know what he was sorry about, but..." she trails off, knowing by his reaction that he knows _exactly_ what Harry is sorry for.

"For something that's none of your fucking business, Granger. And you tell _Potter _," he spits the name, "that I don't need his fucking _pity_, or _guilt_. You tell him that."

Hermione blinks down in surprise over his sudden flash of anger that darkens his features, and she _really_ must find out what all of this is about when she sees Harry later. "Alright, geesh."

His jaw works, his temples moving as he grinds his teeth, and turns his head to look toward the curtain-covered window. Harry's room faces toward the back of the hospital, to where the press cannot reach, but Draco's window faces the front of the hospital directly. She figures he keeps the curtains drawn shut at all times.

She stays with him in his surly silence for another fifteen minutes, trying to make conversation, to which he either replies with short, curt answers, or not at all.

Day: 1437; Hour: 15

"Your scar is gone."

"What? No. No, it's just faded." She approaches his bed tentatively, eyes glued to his forehead, until she is close enough to validate that it is indeed still there.

"That's strange."

"I think it happened once I killed him. It was like... like I could feel him. My head was just... exploding. It was the most intense pain I have ever felt, and I just dropped to my knees. I thought I was going to die after all. That... that maybe I couldn't live without that piece of him inside of me. That all of Moody's paranoid rambling in the beginning, about a Horcrux being inside of me, was really the truth after all."

"It must have been horrible."

"It was. It was, Hermione. I can't even describe it. I blacked out then, and when I came to, I saw Ron lying a little ways away from me. I think the only reason I didn't pass out again was because I was waiting for him to move, so I knew he was alive. When he shut his eyes, I did too, and I woke up here."

Her mind whirled with the information, and she can't stop herself from wondering why they didn't take Harry as well. Then, that rage of paranoia that war brought, wondering if Lupin was hiding Ron's death behind a story of capture so she could get through this too. But, no, because he would have told her when she was back there screaming at him. He wouldn't put her through the idea of hope.

And then, suddenly, all she could see in her mind was the imagined vision of Harry and Ron spread out on the ground, just a couple yards apart. Blood-soaked clothes and trembling bodies exhausted, blue against green as they both waited out the call to unconsciousness to make sure the other was alive. She isn't sure if there was a better way to define them at the end of the war.

"You've survived."

He nods, breathing out, because he probably hasn't grasped it yet. He has lived more than half his life in the looming shadow of Voldemort, and with the knowledge that he might just end up dying by the same wand that took his mother and father. Harry has only known danger and threats, and has spent so long looking for it and living with it, that he is probably more clueless than she as to how to live without it.

They pass the time with idle chatter and by the time he reaches his questions on how everyone else is doing, she is nervous. She knows, almost certainly, that he will ask about Draco, and she isn't sure just how she should respond.

"Did you see Malfoy again?"

"I did." She holds her breath. "Did you tell him?"

"I did."

Harry does not ask what Draco's reply was, because she thinks that he knows it wasn't a good response. Instead, he trains his eyes on the fading colors of light through the cracks in the blinds, and is quiet in thought for several beats of her  
heart.

"I killed Lucius Malfoy, you know." It clicks now; his apology, Draco's fierce reaction to it.

"Good."

Harry gives a small shake of his head. "He was... he had Ron. Ron's wand was gone I think, and he was just... _torturing_ him. He gave him that cut. On his face. Did you see it?"

"Yes," she lies, and it hurts.

"I had two Death Eaters fighting me, and one more coming in from the left. I couldn't do anything. He was there, leaning against the side of a tree, about to die, and I did nothing."

"You couldn't, Harry. If you tried, you would have been dead yourself before you even stopped Lucius. And Ron is alive," _is he, is he, is he_? "there's no reason to feel guilty over something that didn't even happen."

"I know. I know this. That's why I don't feel guilty about that. I would... if something had happened, I mean."

"But you killed him."

"Malfoy - Draco Malfoy. I looked over, and he was there. Had his father's wand in his hand, and his wand was on him. They were saying something, but I don't know what. Draco, his... hand was shaking. And I just remembered the Astronomy Tower all over again, because that's what it was. Malfoy in front of someone he has to kill, and not being able to do it. He couldn't do it. I saw it."

"So you killed him."

"Yes. Yes, I did. Because I didn't... Because I didn't want Malfoy to change his mind. I didn't want to give him time to decide that he _could_. How can a son live knowing they killed their father, no matter what side they are on? And I didn't blame him one bit, Hermione, because I don't think I could have either. I didn't _want_ him to live with that."

"That's understandable."

"It just... it must be something, you know? To have to raise your wand to your own father. It makes me think of just how much he really gave up. It worked out in the end for him, but... Jesus, Hermione, his _father_. Standing in front of him and waiting for you to kill him. And it doesn't matter sides then, does it? Because either way you're going to feel like a monster."

"But you killed him, Harry. You stopped him from having to."

"That's the thing though. I... I killed him, right _in front of_ his son. And I _know_ how that feels, Hermione. I know what it feels like to have someone murder your father, who you love, no matter what. Then there I was. _Me_. Doing it to someone else."

"There was no choice there, Harry."

"I know! I know there wasn't, but that doesn't make it better, does it? Because I killed a bloke's dad right in front of his face."

"Draco knew it had to be done, Harry. He knew, and that was why he tried to do it himself. If anything, he's more thankful that you took it out of his hands, than he is angry with you."

"I just..." He shakes his head. "Malfoy turned around after, dry heaved into his arm, and he was crying. Not in a real dramatic sort of way, but just enough for me to see his face was wet. Then he turned back around, and... And he looked _right at me_. Right at me, Hermione. And I swear to God I have never felt so guilty about something in all my life. _I_ felt like crying. Like puking. It was Lucius Malfoy, and I've never felt so bad about hurting another person."

"You did what had to be done, Harry. He understands that, I'm sure. You have nothing to feel guilty about. Lucius was a horrible, _terrible_ human being."

"I know he was. But I just... I don't think I'll ever erase the way he looked at me after. I think I'll live the rest of my life with Malfoy's face, just like that, burned into my brain."

"If it wasn't you, it would be someone else. You did the right thing." "Maybe," he whispers. "Yes. Yes, I did. But it was so hard after." "I think the right thing is always the hardest."

"And they say God doesn't want us to be sinners or evil."

She smiles, and he gives her a faint one in reply, sinking back into his pillows, and gazing in quiet sadness at the window again.

Day: 1438; Hour: 17

Hermione hasn't slept since leaving Harry's hospital room, too bent on locating people before exhaustion took her. She has been to three safe houses and five homes, and still only managed to find seven people - one of them stumbling out of a pub near the hospital as she traveled back to check in on people. Harry had been getting ready to leave and Draco had already been gone. She didn't know how they planned on keeping the news of Ron from Harry for much longer.

She is at the white safe house, staring blankly at the abstract painting still attached to the wall by her gum. It feels like decades since she painted it with Dean. It looks worse than she remembers, though it could be because of her drooping,  
bleary eyes - but probably not.

"Where is Malfoy's mother?"

Hermione's head jerks up in surprise, the question random and distant in her exhaustion. "I... don't know."

"Oh." Cho fiddles with the emptiness between her fingers.  
"Why?"

"I was at Malfoy Manor this morning and Justin and Anthony were looking at something out the window. So I went over there, and I saw Malfoy... I guess his father was buried on the property - he had something set up with his lawyers and a caretaker, I heard, because the Ministry would have just let him rot there."

"I'm sure," Hermione replies when Cho pauses for too long, because she wants to get back to the part about Draco.

"He was just standing there at the grave for awhile. He was a good distance away, but Justin and Anthony said they saw him talking before I got over there. Then he starts digging at the ground... I thought we would have to go out there and stop him. Sometimes people go temporarily insane when they lose someone, you know? And I thought... Well, he wasn't doing _that_. He just dug a little hole and then covered it back up. Justin thinks he changed his mind about digging, but I think he just put something there."

"That's odd."

"Yes. Maybe. But I was just thinking about how hard it must be for him. To have his father die, knowing his son betrayed him. I mean...we don't know who Lucius Malfoy was. An evil man, yes, but we don't know if he was a good family man, or how much he loved Draco. You know?"

Hermione nods, and mutters a "Yes," when she sees that Cho isn't looking at her, poking at her fish instead. She has to wonder when people suddenly started giving a damn about him. When Harry, and Cho, and everyone started caring now when they should have realized it was okay before this. But maybe that was just her. Hermione always saw the humanity in things that other people took awhile to come around to.

"He's alone." Cho shrugs. "His father is dead, his friends are dead or in Azkaban. And you could see it, when I looked at him standing there, and when he walked away. Because he knows he's alone."

_He has me_, the thought was like a spear through her brain, and she works to keep her expression free from the surprise she feels at it.

"I just wonder where his mother is. If she's in hiding, or departed, or something. I don't know. It was... so sad."

Day: 1438; Hour: 18

The front page of the paper reads 'Victory!' in large, bold print. Below it is a picture of Harry in glimpses through a wall of guards as he heads to the Apparition point within St. Mungo's. He gives a curt nod to the photographer before a guard blocks the view, smacking the camera down. The pictures goes to feet, the floor, walls, before focusing back on the guards face and starting all over again.

Hermione rips the two pages of the story out of the paper, folding them carefully, and putting them in her bag. When she gets back to Grimmauld she will put it in her trunk for memories sake. She thinks it is important to carry the good things with them as well.

She falls to the bed loose-limb and aching. She will wake up in three hours, having set the alarm, and that is when she will find Ron. Even if she has to do it herself - she is not waiting another still second that feels like a frantic year within her.

Day: 1439; Hour: 8

Lupin and McGonagall call a meeting, standing stoically in the front of the room at the Ministry. They discuss the 'final battle', the lack of its finality, and inform them all that they will be going back to where they were before the battle happened - the safe houses. There is disappointment clouding the air, but it is not prevalent over the sense of victory and survival that has crept in since the news spread.

The last of the Death Eaters still need to be captured before there are celebrations, and before the Death Eaters can hurt more people or produce another Dark Lord. It isn't a done deal that they have won yet. Lupin is stern with this, and  
the Death Eaters will be out for revenge, and so they should expect everything. She does not know if Lupin and McGonagall's faces seem more severe from their new positions as heads of war now that Moody is gone or because of the war itself.

Hermione travels back to the safe house, noting several people - including Harry and Draco's - lack of presence at the meeting, and the tired way in which they all left the room compared to the jubilation upon entering. Hermione returns from the meeting the same way she had left for it, because Draco has told her these same things all along.

Twenty

They eye the bronze knob with trepidation, no one moving or even breathing, as if the silencing charms hadn't been put in place at all. There is a pause at the other side of the door, and then the rattle again, harder and almost angry.

"Who could that be? Everyone's in bed, silencing charms are up... They are up, right?" Lavender's whispering proves her doubt.

"Lupin?"

"Maybe we shouldn't answer it."

"We're definitely not answering it."

"What if something happened though? Or they need us?" Hermione asks this but makes no attempt to move, and there is silence again until something smacks into the door.

"Shit."

"Hide!" Lavender suddenly reverted back to an eight year-old caught by her parents as she jumped up and searched the room frantically. Hermione hadn't even seen her act like that when it was Death Eaters on the other side of the door.

"The stuff!" Justin yells, grabbing the pouch of Portkeys and flinging it into his suitcase, slamming the top down and sits on it for good measure.

Harold proved useless as he knocks over the chess pieces like the game would give them away, Lavender shoving the maps into the waistband of her pants and covering them with her shirt. Justin, for all his realization that they needed to hide the evidence, simply stands in the middle of the room with his hands in the air at his shoulders. Hermione shoves the plans, markers, and list into her pillowcase.

It is probably comical, the look of innocence they plaster onto their expressions when Harold opens the door. Hermione's breathing stops again when the door pulls back, and she recognizes the shoulder, the arm, the long fingers. She can just see half his face when Harold stops from opening the rest of the way. There's a red dash of coloring across his cheekbone and he's out of breath for some reason she can only guess at. He hasn't moved his eyes off Harold, and Hermione curses under her breath when the vein at his temple appears. There is only one positive event that causes that, and this certainly isn't that.

That idea gives her pause, and she glances over toward the rest of her partners in crime to see if they are reading the truth all over her. It isn't exactly normal for a man to show up at a woman's door in the middle of the night, and when Lavender  
shifts and Justin drops his hands, she's convinced they know. Then, suddenly, she wonders if it matters.

Draco doesn't speak for a solid minute, not even after Harold asks him what he needs. The anger pulsing off his stance is frightening. Hermione had never seen him in such a state when he wasn't on a mission or when her own anger wasn't dulling the sharpness of his. It isn't until Harold slouches back and the door opens wider that Draco's eyes find Lavender then Justin's. He breathes out, hard, and his shoulders are slow to relax. The hand clenched around his wand loosens its death grip, and then he looks at her.

Hermione's hit with the revelation of just _why_ he was so angry, and there is an ache of feeling at the pit of her stomach that she doesn't dare call excitement. Draco is assessing her, and she almost laughs at the idea of _her_ and _Harold_, but the  
current situation is too volatile for such a reaction. She doesn't think she has ever witnessed a man get that jealous over her, and it thrills her to the point that she imagines she would be snogging the hell out of him if the room was empty.

He knocks his palm into the door, pushing it past Harold's grip and steps into the room. Harold steps back and Draco kicks the door shut behind him, eyes still locked with hers, and if her breathing is unsteady she would never admit to it. There is a predatory quality to the way he looks at her, but not in the way she is used to. It is a calculation in his eyes and a sneer on his mouth that makes her think he _knows _something more than just what he plans on doing to her that's going to make her do all those things he likes for her to do.

"Three Gryffindors and two of their friends, warded up with silencing and locking charms in the dead of the night. You've earned a fail in stealth and full marks in suspicion. I almost wonder how you ever made it through sneaking around  
Hogwarts, Granger. When are you planning to leave?"

"We don't know what you're-" Lavender starts, but Seamus cuts her off, charging through any weak excuses that wouldn't save them anyway.

"That isn't any of your business, Malfoy."

"I believe it is. An unauthorized mission just looks like you're trying to go hide somewhere. Being that I've stumbled upon this, I don't want to be seen as helping to aid deserters by not reporting it."

"Draco," Hermione whispers, and she doesn't yell because there is something in his face that she recognizes but isn't sure about. A lie.

His eyes meet hers again and holds them, even when Seamus takes up screaming out the offense he feels. "They wouldn't think that, Malfoy! You're much better at helping people in than helping them get out, isn't that right? Like we would come this far just to leave now-"

He wouldn't report her. He would try to convince her to stay, he would try to force her to stay, and if he took her wand and bound her it might have worked. But eventually he would just grow angry and tell her to go. At least, she thinks so.

"We're not deserters, or going rogue... Okay, we're going rogue a little bit, but it's nothing Lupin wouldn't approve of. We just don't have the _time,_ Malfoy, and Lupin would make us wait until we-"

And the way he had looked when the door opened, all red in the face and out of breath like he had been exerting himself. He hadn't been at the house earlier that night. He even still had his cloak on. Draco had come for a purpose... her, but for what, she didn't know.

"Seamus, put down your wand," Lavender sighs and plops down on the bed, the maps crunching under her though it isn't heard over the yelling.

"We're just trying to help her friend out." Harold shrugs, obviously not filled with all that Gryffindor bravado that made the chest puff up with indignation at a word like 'deserter'.

"Weasley, I know."

"You can't make me stay." Hermione tells him this with a quiet steel in the now silent room.

Then Draco is back, emerging from the man with the emotions and stance she couldn't understand. His left eyebrow raised, his shoulder hitting the frame of the door as his leg crossed the other. His fingers twirled his wand, and the corner of his mouth lifted up into a smirk that didn't hold much behind it. He was playing a game, and she knew it, covering up for the fact that he was so _unsure_ about something.

"I could, if I wanted. But if you want to rush off toward post-death glory, Granger, I'm not going to stop you."

"Then why the fuck are you still here?" Seamus snapped, his face still shining with the sweat of his anger.

"Because it would be a shame to miss you dying in front of me. It might make this whole war a bit more tolerable."

"What?"

"I already know about your lack of brains, Finnigan, so there's no point in proving it so often." Draco rose to his full height, blew the fringe from his eyes and sighed in resignation. "I'm going with you."

Day: 1440; Hour: 1

Hermione wasn't going to plead with him. He ignored her when she brought up the fact that he had just been released from St. Mungo's less than 36 hours ago. He looked bored when she pointed out his injuries. He glared when she brought up the possible consequences, and he grabbed her wrist almost hard enough to bruise when she went to test-poke his shoulder. After much bickering, two almost-to-blows arguments between Draco and Seamus, and many angry glares shared between Hermione and Draco, they were finally on their way.

Hermione knew by now that when Draco set his mind to something, there wasn't much hope in convincing him to do, or think, otherwise. Besides, he was skilled, willing and another person to add to the very short list. At the same time that she  
felt safer with him here, she was also nervous about his injuries. She couldn't know the extent of them, or how badly he shouldn't be doing this until he showed the weakness of them, and that was a very hard thing to expect of Draco Malfoy.

"I'm telling you, this is a bad idea. We're now in one of the most underused safe houses with _Malfoy_, and no one knows where we are. It's like the perfect setup for him getting away with murder. _Not_ that I wouldn't be able to kill him first, but it's the _point_ of it, Hermione. Have you lost your fucking mind?"

"First of all, Seamus, do not speak to me like that. Second, if Draco hasn't proved himself to you yet, then he's certainly proved his opinion of you being thickheaded." Hermione snaps, and she would feel bad about it later, but she had reached the end of her patience a long time ago.

Seamus stood, affronted, his Phoenix band hanging limply from a finger as he stares at her. Lavender scratches her temple in a moment of awkwardness, clearly unsure of what side she should take and probably storing the information away to fill in the gossip mongrels that Hermione had defended Draco Malfoy. Again.

Hermione distracts herself from any apologetic feelings by tying the orange band around her arm and humming inside her head. Harold, for his part, remained sitting on the couch with a grin that Hermione had always found incredibly creepy.  
Lavender's boyfriend didn't seem to have any awareness of _vibes_, Draco had told her several weeks ago. The entire room could be bursting with a dozen emotions, or everyone can be stilled in anger or awkwardness, and it was like the man had no concept. He just... kept smiling, staring at Lavender, or both for full effect.

"I'm guessing someone forgot to get all the layouts." Draco drawls this in a way that lets them know he had realized their incompetency a long time ago.

"What layouts? For the buildings?" Draco doesn't answer Justin, who had also learned by now that the blond didn't respond to questions with obvious answers, so he jumps to explanation instead. "We grabbed all the ones that were there."

Draco stuck his tongue against his cheek and lifted his chin toward Hermione. "I need you to show me what all your little symbols mean."

Hermione followed his retreating back into the kitchen and paused awkwardly behind him when he stops at the table. She has no idea why she feels awkward at all, but there it is. Her emotions have spun like tornadoes the whole war, but especially over the last several days. At St. Mungo's she had been so happy and relieved to see him alive, so sidetracked by Harry's life, Ron's status, and Neville's death, that she didn't have time to think. The last time she had really been alone  
with him without his eyes dopey and voice slurred from pain medication, she had thought it would be the last time she would see him alive again.

Now here he was, in fairly good health, fully alert, completely _alive_, and _here_. Here for no apparent reason, though one she could guess at but didn't allow herself to because she could not handle being wrong about it. Perhaps she couldn't handle  
being right about it either. But she wanted to touch him. She wanted to validate the beat of his heart, the warmth of his skin, his breath. That is the reason for her awkwardness - her desire to grab him, or hug him, and her complete lack of  
knowing if she has the right to now. She needed something to connect her to the world again, because ever since she had woken up to Justin's frantic cries after the death of Voldemort, she has been floating like she had before Draco had dragged  
her back down to land over a year ago.

He looks over his shoulder, eyebrows raised at her lack of presence at his side, and he pauses. Something skidded past the tired look in his eyes, and it is the first time she has seen him so weary. It almost scares her. She realizes that her body is  
sagging with the weight of her emotions, and she wonders when it is she began to feel comfortable with him seeing her weakened. She straightens herself out, shaking herself from her thoughts of him, and of everything that has happened the past several days. It isn't time for this yet.

"Granger," it comes out softer than he should be allowed to say it, and it makes her heart pound hard for two beats after.

His eyes flick up, over her head, and his face hardens again, the tired look vanishing from his eyes. She wonders why he allowed her to see it at all. Justin walks past her and to the table, knocking his fist against the worn wood as he looks down at the papers spread out. It takes him a moment but he is not Harold, and when he looks over at her he's almost nervous.

"Alright, let's go then." Draco pulls the papers into one pile, rolling his neck and shooting a glare at Justin. "Are you ready?"

"Yes. I just have to put on my-"

"Then do that."

Justin shot him a glare and Hermione a smile, leaving the kitchen to collect whatever he needed to put on. Seamus was yelling something at Harold about a smile and Lavender was shrieking back in her boyfriend's defense. Draco turns fully toward her, all reserve and emotions as stark as a field of winter.

"I didn't tell you-"

"No, you were too busy with your pity party to remember that time is vital. Isn't that why you went behind the Order's back to do this in the first place?"

Hermione's head pulls back in surprise, and she truly hopes that she looks more angry than offended. "I am fully aware-"

"Then stop standing around like a pile of flesh and move your ass, Granger."

She stays bitterly angry with him and he keeps providing good reasons for it. It isn't until they get back to the safe house, exhausted after a thorough search of an empty building and a half-destroyed house, that she realizes he has been doing it on purpose. Not once had she been overpowered by any emotion but anger, and that bone-deep tired she had felt in the kitchen had been replaced by a determined fury that had him smirking at her when he thought she didn't see him.

Day: 1440; Hour: 19

She stands in front of his door for three minutes. She doesn't know how many times she has lifted and lowered her arm from the knocking position, or from grabbing for the handle, but it is enough times that her shoulder is beginning to feel sore. She is not a coward, but she would have never gone through with either one, and she knows this even when the door is opening in front of her.

She draws a deep breath in and tastes the liquor in the air as he squints in the light of the hallway. Sometimes she gets so used to seeing him in front of her and in her head that she forgets how beautiful he is, and that is a shame. She blushes now, caught, and a brief look of amusement twists his mouth up at the sight of her. He throws his forearm up against the edge of the door and rests his shoulder on the frame, filling up the doorway.

"I would invite you in, but I'm not sure if you want to enter or if you were just planning on guarding my door all night."

"How did you know I was out here?" She matches his whisper.

"The shadow under the door. I figured it was either you or Finnegan about to attempt murdering me in my sleep."

"Oh," because he is really the only person in the world that could make her extensive vocabulary filter down to the basics at times.

He stands and stares at her long enough to make her shift on her feet, uncomfortable with the way she couldn't read his thoughts. She contemplates making up a lie and walking away, but he always sees through them anyway. He is  
still waiting for something though, and she hates that he has to make this difficult.

"Do you have any more?" She makes the motion of drinking, and knowing collided with curiosity on his features.

He steps back and to the side, opening the door for her, and has probably come to expect the look of paranoia she flashes over her shoulder. They had all gone to bed twenty minutes ago, so tired that the enthusiastic noises she had expected from Lavender and Harold's temporary room never came.

Draco closes the door behind her and moved past her toward the desk. She has to blink to adjust to the lighting, a lone lamp on the desk the only source of brightness in the room. She wonders if this was a Bad Idea that she came, if he is finished with this...this...relationship now that the war was almost over. She wonders if she looks clingy or needy because that is the last thing she wants to look like, and the thought keeps her blushing even after he was making his way back to her.

He comes to a stop a foot in front of her, the dark liquid swirling inside the glass he holds. She holds her hand out for it, and when he doesn't move to give it to her she looks up to find him staring down at her. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately.

There is something in the way he looks at her that tells her he is going through and discarding all the possible things to say as well, and the silence grows so thick she has trouble breathing. There are so many things she would like to tell him, and ask him, but that would be digging up a lot of the things she is pretty bent on trying to ignore. She just wants to stop thinking and wondering, and she imagines he feels the same. It was why they started this in the first place.

He moves then, fluidly and decidedly, reaching out to place the glass down on the dresser with one hand and to grab her hip with the other. She isn't sure if she moves at the same time or just after, but it feels as if she is stepping forward the moment he reaches out. Then her hands are clenched in his shirt, and she is pressing into him too hard to not be telling. He bends as she pulls and then she is kissing him, a collision of mouths and tongues that tells her she needed this more than she even thought she did.

"God," she breathes, reaching up to grasp his face, fingers sliding into the hair above his ears.

He _humphs_ a breath against her mouth and reaches down to grab the back of her legs, hoisting her up and against him. Hermione cannot slow her hands, tracking the angles of his face, his neck, the dips of his shoulders. She squeezes and yanks, wrapping her legs so tightly around his hips that the muscles burn. She kisses him hard, teeth clinking, their tongues in a battle for dominance, for need, for something only the other could give.

His hands fold out, fingers spread as if to feel as much as possible against all of him, his hands seeking her waist, her bum, any exposed skin. He trusts her to hold on, reaching between them to unbutton her pants, and he slides a hand under the back of her shirt. His hand is cool against her skin, pressing into her back as the other grabs the hem of her shirt and yanks it up.

Hermione pants for air, gulping in the oxygen as she lifts her arms and they struggle her out of the fabric. He flings it somewhere over her head, and she grasps the material at his shoulders and yanks up, suddenly desperate for the feel of his skin against hers. He kisses the top of her breasts, her neck, her chin, and then her lips again, their whole bodies moving with the struggle for air and the ignorance of making it a priority over keeping their mouths on one another. If she was being clingy and needy now, he forces her not to care, to accept it as the only way to go about this.

She falls back into the bed before she even realizes that he had been walking them toward it, and she gasps in three breaths to make up for the oxygen that leaves her under the sudden crush of his body. He plants a hand into mattress at her shoulder and lifts himself up, pulling his shirt over his head as her hands greet each inch of skin as it is revealed to her.

He throws his shirt over his shoulder and looks down at her, bringing a pause to their frantic movements. His hair is shooting up in every direction from the static cling of his shirt, his cheeks flushed and his eyes dark. This is how she likes him best, exposed and out of control. She arches her hips up and against him and Draco groans, low and rough, one hand sinking into her hair to pull her mouth back to him as he sunk back down and against her. The other pushes under her, around her, the muscles in his arm contracting against her back as he pulls her up, crushing her chest to his. His hand squeezes her hip, wraps around the back of her head, and he devours her in a way that makes her think she has the ability to make him clingy and needy as well.

She is dizzy, hot, and _all over him_. She is the one to wrench her mouth away first, pulling in her breath so hard she wouldn't be surprised if they could hear it across the house. He is just as loud, untangling his hand from her hair to brace himself against the mattress, pushing up as her hands travel from his back to his chest. He kisses her neck, her collarbones, her breasts and down as he pulls back to grab the waist of her jeans, and she realizes that she's trembling.

He stands, leaving her cold as he yanks her pants and underwear off in one rushed pull. He looks down at her in a way that makes her stomach sink in and a smile to turn up her swollen lips, and he grins back wolfishly. She laughs then, because she feels absurd, but doesn't know why. The grin slowly falls away from his face as his eyes rake down her body, and she ignores the urge to cover herself or wiggle about in her insecurity - he had shown her time and times again that that is the last reaction he wants from her, and that she has nothing to feel insecure about with him, not in this. He bends to push his pants to the floor, and when he stands up again he is back to being that dark sort of predatory that frightens her a little and thrills her far more.

God, the amount of days and months she could spend just staring at him like this. Fully aroused in all possible ways, and every dip and contour of his muscles, his skin, his bones that she could spend years exploring but still not know enough of.

"Dra-" she breathes in a hushed tone, but still cuts herself off.

She feels the tip of her ears drag up at another creak in the hallway past the door, and now she knows why he was taking so damn long to get back to her. A door shuts and a light cough comes from the direction of the bathroom. She looks from  
the door back at Draco, the weariness making a slow creep back into his expression, and _oh no_. Oh no because she isn't going to go back to the awkward girl standing in front of his door with her arm raised and not knowing what to say. Because she is refusing to let him stand there in front of her _like that_, and her on his bed _like this_, and let _anyone_ send her back to her room to take care of herself and wish it were him.

They were too fragile, the both of them. If she walked away now, she had no way of knowing if he would open the door for her again. He had proved he still wanted her, and she knew that in some way she would not think about, she needed him. So she stops thinking, and she stops being so afraid. He keeps staring at her cautiously, guardedly when she pushes herself up to her knees, and still doesn't seem to get it when she pushes up and kisses him again. His fingers wrap around her arm, and he kisses her back like he is unsure, and she does not like that at all. Since when had he cared if other people were outside the door?

Her breath is stuttered when she pulls back, and she feels something akin to rejection burning hot at the bottom of her stomach. Confusion morphs his face and his fingers squeeze tighter around her arm as she sinks back down. The action takes her attention away from trying to avoid his eyes and she looks back up at him, trying to remember where he threw her clothes. His head is cocked, his eyes dashing across the plains of her face, and he pulls her back up. He kisses her and she holds her breath, exhaling loudly when he pulls back to look at her. Another kiss, another pull back just as she begins to return it. Hermione's expression gives way to her surprise as comprehension hits that he is testing her. Besides the darkness of his eyes and his swollen mouth, he looks the same as when she has watched him form plans alone in the meeting room. Searching for all possibilities, focused and scrutinizing, with a raw sort of dedication.

What a stupid man. Or, perhaps, he had every reason to think she wanted to bolt the moment she heard one of her friends just outside the door. Hadn't that been what she had done every time she did? She would pick it all apart later, when she had the patience, but that was the last thing she had now.

She is forceful when she grabs the back of his neck and has him meet her halfway, stealing his mouth and pulling him down with her. He follows willingly though, breathing out harshly, and when a door opens and she's still kissing him he finally wraps his arms back around her again.

Day: 1441; Hour: 5

She still does not spend the night with him. It is not that she is ashamed of him, and she hopes he knows this. It is just that it is _easier_ for people to not know, and she needs that. This thing between them has always been difficult with just them, let alone if everyone knew. She didn't want to face the whispers that trailed behind Lavender's feet, the accusation of her friends, or for anyone to make her feel like she was less of a person because she was "shagging Malfoy". And it wasn't just because it was _him_, but because of the whole shagging aspect. She wasn't even in a dedicated relationship with him. Draco was not her boyfriend, and she _didn't even know_ if this whole thing would last from one day to the next.

If it was something solid that she could hold onto and fight for, then she would have. She would. But she didn't even really know how he felt about her, and while she would fight for him and the person he had become, she didn't think she had the  
room to fight for _them_, as something that was bound together no matter what anyone thought of it. Hell, her friends had a hard enough time just knowing they were friends.

But there had been a look in his eyes that, if she hadn't been so worn out, would have cost her sleep that night. She almost wanted to tell everyone, if only to make sure that he never looked at her like that again. She was just scared of so many things, like him calling it off because it looked like she was too serious about it, telling her friends because it mattered enough for them to know. She was scared of how it would feel when he left her and they all knew. The pity, the jokes, the feeling of inadequacy. She would have her own emotions to deal with then, and she did not need them to add to those.

She had never been one for taking the easy road though, despite her excuses, and she knew that it was _shame_ that filled her when she walked away from his bedroom. She had been the one to establish leaving after sex, and he had been the one to change it. It has been her that has always been afraid of people finding out, and him that accepted it. She counted her mistakes like the bruises he left along her skin, and she felt like a coward. There were just so many hard things here, she did not want to add another.

Day: 1441; Hour: 10

Hermione gasps so hard she chokes on it, yanking Lavender toward her with enough force to throw them both back against the wall. Seamus had the wand of the Death Eater in his hand before the green smoke of the Killing Curse had evaporated from where Lavender's shoulder had been. Draco had him bound not a second later as Justin dug through his pockets for the pouch that held the Ministry Portkeys. Hermione clung to Lavender's shoulders a bit longer than she should have during a mission, and if Lavender's shoulders were shaking beneath her sweaty palms she wasn't going to point it out.

"Are you okay?" Hermione looks at Lavender as she pulled away, nodding but visibly shaken.

"Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit." Harold places a hand on her shoulder but Lavender pulls away from it, shaking out her arms, feeling the flow of blood that means she is alive.

"Should we interrogate him?" Seamus nods toward the boy, and Draco shakes his head, eyes darting all around them.

"He's too young. He won't know anything."

Seamus ignores this and is looking toward the rest of them, but when they don't answer he rolls his eyes. "I guess I'll take your word for it, seeing as how you have some real inside information as to how the Death Eaters work."

"Well, if you want," Draco begins in a drawl, but his voice turns hard, "I can free him and let him take you with him so you can get some _insider information_ for yourself-"

"Guys," Hermione cuts off the next big blowout, watching Harold shake the boy hard enough to look like a lifeless doll in the hands of an excited three year-old.

"Do you know where Ron Weasley is? Sandra Colack, Peter Hemmings?"

"Send him to the Ministry. He won't talk until he's under Veritaserum."

Draco is probably right, judging by the look of defiance the boy stared back at them with. They also tried for fifteen minutes on one of the other young Death Eaters they had found in the house, and that had proved a complete waste of time. Justin pushed the Portkey into the hollow of the boy's throat, standing up as he vanished to the Ministry.

That was the fourth they had sent back, and after another round of searching the house, the last they would find (or that would find them). Hermione tries to tell herself it wasn't pointless, because they still caught four Death Eaters, low in rank or not. It doesn't make her feel less frustrated or anxious.

Day: 1441; Hour: 17

"How did you know?" Hermione waits for him to look up at her in confusion before she grabs the bag of crackers out of his hand.

Confusion turns into a glare as he reaches forward and grabs her wrist, just in time for her to switch hands. "Know what?"

He moves back to his side of the couch, grabbing the remote in case she decides to make a go for that as well. They both had trouble sleeping all the time. He was out of liquor, a new sleeping method for him, and she was out of her mind with thinking.

"What I was planning to do. With Ron."

"Please. You're as predictable as the taste of pumpkin juice."

She pauses in her dig for a cracker, glares at him, then finally rips the bag more for better access. "Are you calling me boring?"

He snorts, flipping the channel to those exercise infomercials he loved so much. "Hardly."

"Good," she sniffs, munches on a cracker.

"You knew Potter was fine. The entire world knew Potter was fine. Once I found out about Weasley, I knew exactly what you would be doing. Rushing off into peril with your happy-to-die ex-Gryffindors, going to fight the good fight."

She snorted this time, her mouth dry from the crackers and she eyes his drink. "Hypocrite. You're fighting the good fight as well. _And_ you're here to go 'rush off into peril' with us."

"Well, someone has to survive to tell the story to future generations. A lesson to future Gryffindors, showing them the proof in history of how stupid their House is. Though, knowing you lot, they would likely weep tears of joy at the _bravery_ of it all."

"Right," she rolls her eyes and sucks her tongue off the roof of her mouth.

He is an ex-Slytherin, and proves the traits of his own House when he waits until she has forgotten and grown comfortable, ripping the bag of crackers out of her hand with a smirk. He looks completely surprised when she tackles him.


	2. 21-22

Twenty-One

Day: 1442; Hour: 8

Lavender has been staring at her for ten minutes now, and Hermione stabs her scrambled eggs with annoyance. "_What_?"

"Do you think we've made history?"

"What?" Hermione asks again, looking up.

She feels bad for sounding so annoyed, but the morning found her with little sleep and a horrible headache. She felt hungover despite that she couldn't even remember the last time she had drank alcohol. Justin and Seamus were mostly to blame, full out screaming at one another for the past twenty minutes about _Quidditch_ of all possible things. Of course it wasn't _really_ about Quidditch, just like how Draco opted for a shower instead of her yelling at him about pancakes ten minutes ago. In order to avoid the bigger issues, they were all concentrating on the smaller ones. It was called coping, and Hermione didn't think any of them could be at blame for that.

Except Justin and Seamus of course, because her head was _pounding_.

"What we've done. I mean, the war will...Harry will. Maybe Ron. But do you think we will be in there as well?" Lavender doesn't even pause long enough for Hermione to exhale before she's talking again. "I was just thinking about Hogwarts, and history classes. Reading the stories of dead people - I _hated_ that."

"It isn't just stories about dead people, Lavender. History is made up of people who did great things...great good, or great evil, but great things that somehow shaped the world into what we know of it. It's important to know."

"Why? I mean, I just keep thinking... All of this. It's all just going to be in books that students are going to hate reading about, you know?"

"Then why do you care if your name is in it?"

"I don't know. Well...just, credit, you know? If they're going to talk about it, I think they should talk about every one of us."

Hermione scratched at her cuticle, her nails short and cracked. "Our sacrifices only matter to us, Lav. Everything that was lost here, they just can't put that all down. Even if they did, people wouldn't _get it_. Not like we do. That doesn't matter. We know what this was, and what we-"

"You just said it was import-"

"The _outcome_ is important. The main events that led us to that outcome are important. For people to know that there was struggle, and to know that there were people that had to meet it, that's important. Lists of names aren't. I don't care if I'm  
a footnote or nothing at all, I know what I gave and it gave back, and that is _enough _for me."

"So you mean to say we're not important?"

"Not to history books, no. But it doesn't matter, don't you see that? History will remember us as the Order, and the Ministry, and the brave ones. History will remember us because it was _us_ that sacrificed for that "important outcome". It doesn't matter if they list all of our names for people to skim over and just think about how long the damn list is. They will just know that it was that blob of a list that caused the events at the end of the chapter. But it was never about making history, Lavender. It was about changing the future."

"Well, they should care enough to read the list, and then maybe-" Lavender started, her face pinched in annoyance that grew sharper when laughter cut her off.

"Wasn't that you I heard bitching from the hall about hating to read a dead person's story at school?" Draco glowered at her, his thought that she was a hypocrite all over his face.

"What are you doing? You are getting a glass for that, right?" Hermione cut off Lavender's response, pointing at him and the open jug of orange juice grasped in his hand.

He raised an eyebrow and turned, sauntering away with both girls glaring at his back.

Day: 1442; Hour: 15

They find the building in ashes, wood still smoldering with the crawl of fire and smoke still darkening the sky. Tree branches bow out to them, weighed heavy with ash and the buds of coming spring. They couldn't help but wonder if _they_ had known  
they were coming.

Day: 1442; Hour: 21

"It doesn't bother you?" Draco asks this question out of nowhere, and she jumps because she didn't even know he was in the room. She had been too busy staring at the jug of orange juice and wondering why he had put it back. Gross.

"What?" Then again, she doubts that she has room to talk about his germs.

"That Potter will be raved about in history as if he did the whole damn thing singlehandedly."

"He deserves it." "We don't?"

She finally turns from the fridge, questions about jealousy on her tongue but she swallows them. She will not go there, because she doesn't think he deserves for her to. "Harry has lived his whole life with this as his destiny. He sacrificed a lot-"

"Yes, living with Weasley in some comfortable housing, having every Ministry and Order high-up with their heads shoved up his ass and-"

"Don't you _dare_ take away from what he's gone through and has done. If Harry hadn't been able to kill Voldemort, we would have lost no matter what we-"

"And if we hadn't fought for _years_ before that, Potter would have been dead along with-"

"Harry didn't have the choice like we did! He-"

"No one had a choice! Everyone who ended up in this fucking war did it because they didn't have another choice! Whether it be because they knew the world would go to hell along with their own lives, or because they were trying to guarantee the  
survival of their friends, family, or their own selves, no one had the _choice_."

"That is a lie! Ev-"

"You're so bloody stupid! You are so unaware of the bullshit that comes out of your mouth, and I can't help but wonder if you're one of those liars who can't convince anyone but themselves about what they say!"

"What are you _on_ about?" Hermione exclaimed, throwing up her hands.

"All that _shit_ you fed to Brown. I know your mighty noble act, Granger, and-" "That was the truth!"

"_Bullshit_! Bull. Shit. You've given up all you know of your former life to be in this war, and with a sacrifice like that, you want to be remembered for it. Everyone in the world wants to be remembered for something, and-"

"Don't pretend you know me! Don't. You. Dare. Because if you knew me at all, you would know that I don't want to be remembered for this! I don't want to be remembered for having killed people, and-"

"Oh, _come off it_, you-"

"-something that bettered society, and wasn't achieved through violent means but-"

"-fucking high horse, always taking the high road but ducking your head-"

"-not that I'm not proud of having done the best I could here, but I don't need some sort of-"

"-like it or not, that's what had to be done, and what has _always_ had to be done. People know that when you-"

"-have a choice. _You_ had a choice, and you chose to-"

"-with... I never had a choice! No one did! Why is that so hard for you to-" "-just as much as I did, and Neville, and Ron, and-"

"-everything in our lives shapes us to the road we're ultimately going to take. I'm talking about survival here; I'm talking about the best option. And _no one_ is going to run away from this when it means they will lose the things most important to-"

"-and fine, maybe Harry did have a choice, but it wasn't much of one. Was he just going to stand around and let people die? That's not in his character, and-"

"Exactly! Fucking _exactly_! Potter wasn't going to let people die, because of his character, because who he was and how he felt made it so that he didn't have a choice-"

"That's exactly what I've been trying to say!"

"You-"

"Jesus, Draco! You're...you're so..." Hermione yells, or growls, or something in between and slams the fridge door shut. Something falls, shatters inside, but she's already walking away and far too angry to care about a mess.

She makes it five steps into the living room before he grabs her arm, flinging her back so hard there is a moment of pain in which she is sure he has pulled her arm out of the socket. She stumbles back against him and jerks forward to break the contact nearly as quickly as she had found herself there.

"Why the hell is it always about Potter for you?" Draco screams this question in such a way that, despite the loud volume just seconds ago, makes her jump.

"What?" She doesn't know why this comes out as a whisper, or why she is so slow to turn around and face him.

"The same thing I've been trying to tell you about everyone involved in this war, you just can't get unless I say it is directly and only pertaining to Potter. As if everyone else doesn't matter as much."

"I never said that! I never even-"

"Yes, you have. Yes, you have, and a thousand times over! It's in everything you do! You don't care if no one else is named for helping win the war, just as long as Potter is. It was Potter that didn't have a choice, the rest of us did. It was Potter-"

"Shut up."

"No, I don't think I will. It was Potter who would win this whole thing, and what we did just didn't matter nearly as much. It was Potter who didn't choose _you_ to go with him, and it was Potter who built up this whole insecure bullshit that you have  
that you aren't good enough, or worthy enough, or didn't _give_ enough to earn a fucking _footnote_ in-"

"You don't know what you're talking about!" She jerks out of his grasp when she notices that she is still in it, matching his glare, but his seems harder somehow.

"I know exactly what I'm talking about, and I know exactly who you are, Granger, despite that you don't think I do," it won't be until later that she will think of this, remember, and feel bad. "Despite that I'm not Potter, so I must not."

"You're out of your mind! You know me just as well as Harry now, and perhaps..." She trails off. Did he? He is sneering down at her.

"Perhaps you should start judging your own worth rather than taking it as whatever you think Potter deems it to be-"

"That-"

"I know the real reason why you don't care about being mentioned in history. I know that you know it as well. You're not ashamed of your participation in this war, don't pretend you are. You're ashamed that it wasn't enough. But Potter? Potter's _must_ be enough, so he should get credit where credit-"

"I-"

"You're fighting an entire war to prove to the other side that you're worthy of everything they are. Why is it different when it comes to your friends, Granger? What the hell is wrong with you?"

She stares up at him, jaw slack, and then shoves him. She slams two open palms into his chest and thrusts her weight forward, and then she does it again. He doesn't come after her when she leaves this time.

Day: 1443; Hour: 13

"This is getting excessive."

"No shit," Seamus mutters darkly, staring at the cottage in front of them, the flames vicious and hot against their faces.

"It's like they know our next move before we even get here. Step ahead or whatever." Lavender sighs heavily and yanks her foot from the mud she was sinking in.

Hermione pauses with Lavender's thoughts, turning to look at Harold and is surprised to find Draco already staring at him. Because war makes you paranoid - because Draco does. Because Harold was new amongst bonds of trust, and war  
formed things like spies and weak lines. Draco looked away before Harold caught them, but Hermione is forced to drop her awkward eyes to Draco's shoes as they turn in the slosh.

"Let's go."

Day: 1443; Hour: 19

"I might be sorry."

Draco raises his eyebrows in that way that tells her 'this is going to be interesting' while managing to look completely _dis_interested. Hermione then realizes that her nose is sticking straight up in the air and for someone who is trying to apologize it looks too much like she is expecting one. She might be.

"I shouldn't have shoved you like that. I realize that I might have...Harry issues," a twitch of a smirk and she glares at it. "It's a long process, to try to define yourself when you lose the things that used to...but I'm sure you know all about that. In a harder way, even."

"Granger, have you been drinking?" She glares at him, her hands dropping the nervous yanking of her fingers and her shoulders pulling back from their slump. Later she'll wonder if that had been his point - he has a harsh sort of kindness to him, and he also grew uncomfortable with her emotions.

"You _do_ know me, Draco. So there's no reason for me to tell you that it wasn't just because of recovery time that I didn't invite Harry to come with us. I can be petty, maybe. I'm holding a grudge. And...and I want him to see what's like, I guess, and God that sounds so bad when I say it out loud."

"Don't worry, Granger. I'm well acquainted with the darker sides of you." He is acting as if the parchment with three lines written on it is in a secret code he's trying to figure out. Really, she knows it is because he's paying close attention but he doesn't want to look the part.

"I know," she whispers, and is a little surprised when the shame does not come. Perhaps because he never made her feel as if it was something to be ashamed of. "You most of all, I would think. But there's another reason why I didn't tell Harry - I didn't think to, not until later. Because I'm not defined by him or Ron. I love them, but they no longer make up who I am. And I just...I just didn't realize until after I left that it was even an option to bring Harry."

"And you don't judge your worth by what Potter thinks of you?" Draco raises an eyebrow and sits back, leveling his stare on her and giving up the pretense.

"Don't we all judge our worth by what our friends and family think of us? On how we are to other people?"

"I would have killed myself a long time ago," Draco drawls, and Hermione has no idea how she can laugh about that, but she does. She is gratified by the slow smile on his lips before ducking her head to regain her point.

"There's a big part of me that takes into account what my friends judge of my worth, I'll admit that, and I don't know if that will ever change. But there's still a part of me that is proud of who I am despite anything - that's why I'm 'bossy' when no one likes it, and why I was smart when it wasn't cool, for example."

"You certainly never had a problem with either of those." He smirked and she throws her bag of popcorn at him in retaliation, the kernels flying all over his lap and the couch. She makes a disgruntled noise when he grabs a handful and he  
laughs at her.

"I saw how Harry was in school. I could only imagine how bad it was for him during the war. Harry is the sort of man who reads the list of casualties and blames himself for every one of them - you have to understand that. Ron and I, growing up,  
we just sort of knew we were the sidekicks to Harry. It took a long time to get over that."

"You're still not over it, Granger."

"Maybe not. But I understand that we all played our parts, and maybe we fought more than he did. But there is no way Harry ever gave less heart than anyone that fought in this war. He deserves-"

"I never said he didn't."

Hermione shrugs, walking toward him as he continued to munch on her popcorn. His eyes narrow at her growing proximity, and she can see his fingers tighten around the bag. "I just want you to know that I was honest when I said I didn't care  
about history. It's the future I want a part in, and I'll make my name there."

"Freeing house-elves, volunteer work in Africa, running the Ministry, adopting sick children, inventing the cure for insanity and at least thirty-five diseases within the first ten years?"

She smiled widely at him. "You know me so well," because she thought it was important that she say it again, the guilt still lingering over her accusation that he didn't.

He hums and jerks the bag over his head when she makes a quick lunge for it. She falls forward and snaps her hand up to catch her balance on his forehead, quickly planting her foot to the side of his leg to launch herself up toward his raised hand. He brings his arm back down again with a laugh and she growls at him.

"You have an obsession with snacks. God knows how many times we've found ourselves in this same-"

She is momentarily taken back by his reference to Muggle faith. She smiles because she knows it is because of her. "I think it's only fair to say that we both have an obsession-"

"No, I _like_ snacks, _you_ attack for the sake of them." Her attempts at chasing his darting hand were proving futile. "As far as obsession, I believe you ha-"

"Draco, come on, that's the last of them, and _I_

"I'm sorry, did I give the impression I could be swayed by your half-ass-" "You _will_ give those back-"

"-and threats?"

"_Malfoy_."

"Did...did you just _whine_ at me?"

"No," she blushes, and collapses down into the couch next to him, glaring as he switches the bag to his other hand and holds it away from her.

"I've never heard you whine before," he sounds completely amused. "Well, except-"

"Shut up."

But it's gotten the idea in his head because he's giving her that half-lidded cocky look that always makes her breath come a little faster. "You know, you can earn them back."

Hermione is quick with her plan, because she has always been quick with planning. "Is that so?"

He sticks his tongue against his cheek when she moves to sit on his lap, and there's a lightness in his eyes that she always likes to put there. "Something can be arranged, I'm sure."

"And what do you want?" She runs her hands up his chest and to his shoulders, blushing as she asks because that sort of thing can't be helped with her.

"I'm not sure," he feigns disinterest, humming in bored contemplation, but his hand runs up her thigh in a manner too possessive for his act.

She isn't used to this sort of playful with him, or anyone really, so she bows her head to speak against his neck. "I'm sure you can think of something."

She kisses him under his jaw, marking a hot path up to his ear, and hates how she's already breathing too fast. He flexes his hips up in reaction, and she can swear his heart is picking up tempo under her tongue. Perhaps she isn't the only one so  
easily affected.

His hands come up to her hips, his mouth down to her shoulder, and she almost backs out of her plan. It's really the principle by now though, and so she slides her hands down his arms, hearing the crinkling of the bag in his left hand. She's about to go for it when he pushes back into the cushion and ducks his chin, forcing her to lift her head from him. She can feel her heart pound harder with the look he gives her, his right hand coming up to grasp her face as he pulls her down to his mouth. His tongue flicks and winds around hers, and when she grinds down he grinds back up into her, and really, screw the popcorn.

Her hands leave his arms for the hem of his shirt, and his arm encircles her, the bag crinkling on impact with the floor as he drops it. She is just about to suggest a bedroom when she feels the smile on his lips, and her hands pause in their exploration of his skin as he pulls back.

"I win," he breathes, and makes to kiss her again, but she pulls back this time.  
"What?"

"Distract me with the promise of sex in order to get the bag? I would say well played, love, but it wasn't."

Hermione narrowed her eyes, and she is sure her lips would have been thinning had they not already felt swollen. He laughs, and his thumb brushes across her cheekbone in a move so affectionate she's automatically not angry with him. She thinks this might be a dangerous thing.

She _feels_ something that has her face dropping the saucy look and her eyes darting up and away from the welcoming dark grey in front of her. Lavender is walking silently into the room, stifling a yawn, her eyes glued to the white of Draco's  
head. Hermione is positive her heart and breath have stopped, but not in the way that she is aware of it. The world goes strangely out of focus, and though a thousand things shoot across the forefront of her mind, she remains statuesque and silent.

"Draco, do you have the plans and layouts for tomorrow?"

Draco's whole body goes stiff under hers, and Hermione thinks it's too late of a reaction. "Why?"

Lavender continues walking into the room as if it's completely normal. As if finding Hermione Granger sitting in the lap of Draco Malfoy is something she sees everyday. Hermione's vision is blurred, and she realizes - because she has known it well enough - that this is full-blown panic mode. Her hands shake on Draco's shoulders, his hand falls away from her face, but his arm still remains around her and she doesn't know _why_.

Though it really is too late to come up with excuses. _I was examining his teeth, I was trying to experiment with textures, I'm completely pissed so I don't even know where I am - oh,_ is _that Draco Malfoy?_

"Hermione." She breaks from her thoughts to focus on him, and he must be reading the wild look on her face because it is rare for him to say her name, and like that. She becomes aware of his hand at her hip and the slight pressure that lets her know it's time to get off his lap.

"Right," she practically chokes the word out, and Draco is still giving her that inscrutable look as she backs up and onto her numb feet.

"So? Can Harold and I look at them, or are you just going to keep them all to yourself? You know we have the right- sorry for interrupting, Hermione - but we have the right to look at those plans..."

Lavender's voice trailed away as Hermione somehow made it to her bedroom. She closed her eyes and pressed her back to the door, trying to control her erratic breathing and calm her mind so she can actually _think_.

Draco did not come that night.

Day: 1444; Hour: 11

"Why the hell are you so twitchy?"

Hermione jumped, spilling hot tea onto her hand, and hissing through her teeth. "Wh-what?"

She had slept for two hours and twelve minutes last night. Probably less, but the clock had read 3:55 when she closed her eyes for the last time, and though it took her awhile to fall asleep after, she was counting those twelve minutes as sleep. Sometimes she lied to herself about how much sleep she got, a whole "mind-over-matter" business to keep her from trying to convince herself it was _understandable_ if she head-on-table drooled the day away.

It had taken awhile for her to calm down enough to even begin to think of what had just happened. Then, as her analytical mind has the habit of doing, she tore each moment to pieces and evaluated them until her head felt numb. Draco and  
Lavender's utter lack of a reaction meant that neither one seemed to care. Though Hermione had been a bit too out of it to notice if Lavender was internally jumping for joy over the biggest bit of gossip to hit since...well, Hermione didn't even know when. Draco _had_ tensed, but Hermione found by the yelling outside her door it was more to do with Harold requesting the plans and Draco's raging paranoia.

Hermione had The Epiphany around 9:27 that morning. While picking apart body language and contemplating ways to keep Lavender quiet, she quite suddenly asked herself why she even cared. Ron would have a heart attack, Harry might die of  
shock, and whispers of rumors and cruel words would follow her for God knew how long.

Hermione realized that there wasn't much of a reason to keep it such a secret. It wasn't like Draco was a Death Eater or something, and if he was, the whole thing wouldn't have started anyway. Draco's words had dug at her gut after The Epiphany when she _got it_. When she understood that the whole reason she was hiding the thing from everyone was because she wanted to escape their judgment, the attacks on her character, the decline _in her worth_. Had that been part of what he had been talking about all this time? And furthermore, _guilt_, as dark and ugly as the hatred on a battlefield overwhelmed her with its suggestion - Draco probably thought she was _ashamed_ of him. Why wouldn't he? She was hiding the fact that _he_, of all people, was her...lover, because of the fallout of associating herself with him. Because being  
with him was a decline in _her worth_, and how horrible was it for him to think that. To know it, even.

She had been ashamed, in the beginning of it all. Then the hiding was just normal, and it was so much _easier_ to have it be a secret than to deal with the reactions of it being out in the open. She had enough to worry about, let alone the task of  
defending her character. Of defending his. That was the excuse she made, even after seeing his reaction the other night, when someone had been outside the door. She had tried to ignore it, to make her line of logical excuses. But now that she actually let herself think about the entire situation, she felt horrible. Guilt-ridden and burdened more by the idea that he had known about how she felt with _worth_ than the idea of what was to come when other people found out.

At 10:02, she stopped caring. So, they would know. They would know that she was having a sexual relationship with someone who was not her boyfriend. They would know that it was Draco Malfoy; respected, feared, and hated Malfoy. The whispers and looks that exploded behind Lavender's back would now be behind hers, and maybe worse. But Hermione had faced Death Eaters, war, murder, and the death of her friends. Everything paled in comparison to that. She was not afraid.

Just, as Lavender pointed out, _twitchy_.

"Is this about last night?" Lavender whispers this, causing Hermione to raise her eyes to hers in surprise of her caution.

Hermione didn't know how people would react, and what they would say. She is nervous, because it takes someone saying something harsh for to be angry. "Yes."

"Hermione," Lavender laughs, takes a bite of her pancake, shakes her head. "What's the difference between people knowing and people seeing? Come on."

"What?" She is unintelligent in the morning. Fine, just when she's unsure. "You already knew?"

Lavender looks at her like Hermione might be playing a game, and then like she is naïve. Hermione takes great offense. "How could I not? Do you notice how often I'm in the same place as you two? You've had the whole shagging vibe going _forever_, and _please_ \- do you guys realize how loud you can be sometimes? There's no  
mistaking certain sounds you know."

Hermione's eyes are large and blink unseeing at her cup of tea, face hot and body awkward. "So everyone knows?"

"I don't know. No one really talks about it. There's other things to worry about it, you know?"

"No one says anything?" Hermione looks up, eyebrow arched in disbelief.

Lavender looks at her a little too long before dropping her eyes to her breakfast, shrugging. "Nothing important, Hermione. Nothing that matters."

"Oh." That, then. "How long have you known?"

"Merlin...a year? Maybe more, maybe less. I heard your bed squeaking one night, and...fine, I spied, and there's no one else with that white hair that could have been walking out of your door later, you know?"

_A year_? She had known for _that long_, and whoever else had as well, and Hermione had just kept on going unaware? It was all old news then. Jesus.

"I'll admit, I wouldn't think Draco, of all people, you know? I figured you would find a more...well, you know. And I already tried out that-" Hermione's head shot up so fast and her glare so intense that Lavender immediately stops and pushes back in her chair.

Lavender could have been a hypocrite and called her anything she wanted, but the _last_ thing Hermione was willing to hear from her was about her past hookups with Draco. By the look on Lavender's face she understands, belatedly, that she might have given something more away by the fierceness of her reaction.

"Hermione," Lavender whispers, and Hermione blushes, drops her head, breathes in deep. "It's okay. I mean, it happens, you know? And...and who really cares anymore."

"Right."

"The war will be completely over soon, and we're all going to move on with our lives and forget about the stupid stuff that happened here. Malfoy will probably go disappear, and Harold and I will marry, and you'll be back with Harry and Ron. It'll all go back to...to a kind of normal."

Hermione doesn't notice that she stopped breathing until she only hears Lavender's in the long silence of the room. If her voice comes out thick, Lavender pretends to not hear it. "Right."

Twenty-Two

Day: 1444; Hour: 14

Missions were almost always at night unless they were an emergency or they discovered something that forced them to be during the day. Wards were placed around most Death Eater spots in the Wizarding World, and any magic like  
concealment charms were a dead giveaway to the Order's presence. Darkness was the natural concealment they were forced to use. Hermione had grown used to sleeping when it was light out, and not sleeping at all.

"If these are in the Muggle world, why can't we do it during the day? It's not like-"

"Because we're sort of on the run." Justin smiles about this in a way that suggests he might be hanging out with too many Gryffindors.

"If we run into anyone we're going to have to use magic anyway - if that happens, we're going to the second plan to control the situation and search the house then get out quickly. Not using magic beforehand, when it's unnecessary, buys us time." Draco made his first appearance that day, and Hermione hoped no one noticed her jump at the sound of his voice behind her.

He walks past her and to the fridge, but he doesn't meet her eyes. There's probably a dozen things she wants to ask him, but only one that she actually will - did he know before. He didn't seem surprised at Lavender's flippant attitude toward finding them, and he acted like it was fairly normal himself. At least that's what she remembered in her panic mode. She would also like to ask him things about the status of their "relationship" now, but she wouldn't dare.

It might have always been a guessing game about how he felt, but that was partly her fault as well. Even as nerve wracking as it was, she had decided to just let it be whatever it was going to be since they first started this all. She was scared it would push him away, give too much of herself away - she could admit that, if only to herself.

"Good plan," Harold nods and sips his coffee. Draco had obviously decided his slight suspicion of Harold wasn't worth continuing the argument with Lavender last night. Creepy grin or not, the guy didn't seem to hold much capability of being a spy.

"Later there's another house in a Muggle neighborhood; the address we found at the building with the rats. It's not close to any authorized Apparition points or wizard/Muggle lines. We're going to have to use Muggle transportation to get there."

They had made Portkeys for all the locations they had found before they left Grimmauld. Their inability to use magic unless it was absolutely necessary prevented them from making one for the new location. Justin had suggested stealing a car. Hermione had no idea what they would do.

"It looks like it's about an hour, maybe two away. An automobile?" Justin bent over to page through the notes of plans with an oddly silent Seamus.

"There looks to be a train system close to the first house we'll be going to. We'll pick up a city map when we arrive at the second location."

"Right. Do we have Muggle currency?" Lavender gave Draco a look that plainly said he was an idiot.

The room is silent, all eyes on Draco except for Seamus who continues to stare at the stack of papers. Draco is staring at the tiled floor, not in thought, but _waiting_. Waiting because he knew that _she_ did, and he wasn't even saying it or _looking_ at  
her. She had never seen him back down from anything, so what was he doing it from now? Her reaction after a night of thinking about what happened? Her reaction last night? Was he angry or just giving her time? Because she didn't need it and she didn't want it.

Perhaps he had decided to call the whole thing off. Maybe he was done, and he was sick of her keeping him some dark nasty secret, and he was done. She wanted to throw something at his head, maybe. Just to knock whatever he was thinking out of his mouth.

She chokes a little when she breathes in, and they all look at her except for him. "I do."

Day: 1444; Hour: 18

"That place was cleaned out months ago. Waste. Of. Time. _Again_." Seamus sounds completely furious, and his overreaction does nothing to help the desperation welling up inside of her.

"Ron is here somewhere. They all are, we just have to-" Hermione cuts herself off sharply at the look of raw fury Seamus gives her before practically marching on ahead of her.

Hermione's heart jumps and the hairs rise at the nape of her neck. She has seen Seamus angry more times than any other emotion, but she had never actually _feared _him like that moment. It makes her slow her pace enough for Justin to walk right into her.

Justin mutters a quick apology and squeezes the top of her arms before coming up alongside her. "We're not giving up hope, Hermione. It's just frustrating."

"I know."

"How far is the train station from here?"

"Thirty minute walk about." Harold checks his watch twice in the amount of time it takes for him to say it.

"Great."

Day: 1444; Hour: 19

He doesn't say anything, just grabs her arm and drags her past him. At least it was some normal manhandling and not a, 'Hermione, I would like for you to please sit with the harmless looking female rather than the criminal looking bloke in the only available seats, so please come forward.' She almost expected it with the alternate universe she had stepped into. _This_ Draco hadn't even glared at her once all day, even when she purposely criticized his plan.

So she sat and stared as the back of his head, watching him glare at the burly man next to him as he sized him up. She wondered if other people could sense the danger around Draco, or if was something confined to their world and reputation. By the way the man decided to ignore Draco after, she was guessing he carried at least as much danger-vibe as the man who looked like he was recently paroled from the penitentiary. The deep cuts along his jaw and the fact that he looked as if he hadn't slept in three years added to it drastically.

"Draco," there wasn't much escape from her direct line of questioning, and he knew that by now judging by the increased tenseness to his shoulders, "can I see the map?"

She had been trying to find a way to show him that she was okay with people knowing about them - that she wasn't ashamed to be with him, or wanted to stop being with him. She wanted to show him in a way that got to the point but didn't seem too desperate, like it meant a lot, or that she was only doing it because she felt bad. She wanted to know if he was still okay with all of it. Hermione knew this couldn't be accomplished through asking for a map, but she needed some  
_interaction_.

At least when he was angry she usually knew how to handle him. She didn't even know what this was, and she was so frustrated she wanted to whack him over the head with said map.

He handed it to her silently, and it takes her a moment. "This is for the place we just left."

"No shit," _finally, finally_.

"Oh," because she realized that they had established hours ago that they would get the other map when they got into the town. "Why did you even give it to me then?"

"Because you asked for the map, and that happens to be the map." He is speaking to her like a child, but just this once, she'll take it.

No, she won't, so she smacks the back of his head with the rolled paper. The temptation had proved too great. He turns quickly and glares at her, and she almost smiles before he grabs her wrist and squeezes uncomfortably.

"Hit me again," he warns and yanks the map from her hand.

He was angry then, on top of whatever confusing emotion was on his face when he purposely ignored her. It took ten minutes before she thought it might be from her reaction last night, when she realized she might be a little angry too if he reacted like the world was falling apart because someone found out he was shagging her.

Draco was still a prideful man. Despite the lack of an actual relationship, there was probably no one else he was more vulnerable with. It had been bad enough when she was so over cautious about keeping them a secret because of who he was. The only thing that could have made her reaction worse was if she had spoken the terrible excuses in her head and perhaps a crying jig.

She felt even worse than she had before.

Day: 1444; Hour: 22

She kept staring at him, and he noticed it judging by the exasperated looks he keeps sending her. She had seen him in Muggle society before, but it is strange to see him in the sharp lighting of a gas station, standing between a mechanic and a  
group of kids into the fashion statements of rap artists. She has to grab for the popcorn three times before she finally drags her eyes away from the sight over the shelf.

The group of teenagers glares at her when she passes them to stand with Draco. In the war Hermione has learned to differentiate the attitude of others. The cocky confidence that has no reason for it, the fear of not knowing what kind of fighter they made, the ugly blood thirst of those who had been overtaken by the fighter they became. Draco, like Harry and Lupin among others, had a quiet yet powerful confidence. The sort of confidence that came with knowing how to kill, and that you _could_ kill, if you had to. It was dark and terrifying, yet controlled. Hermione, however, doesn't think she will ever lose her Holy-Do-Good visage, so when she glares back they just glare harder.

"Is the popcorn necessary?" His voice sounds dull; she hates it.

"Let's see if you're asking that later when you're stealing it again."

He looks down at her, her nose up in the air and her eyebrow arched to match his. She drops it when she notices that he is scrutinizing her expression, and she is reminded of the other night, the cough outside the door. She opens her mouth but she doesn't know what to say, just the feeling that she _should_, so she breathes in really deep and feels his exhale across her skin.

"Sir?"

Draco looks up at the woman behind the counter and moves forward, leaving Hermione to blink at the spot between his shoulder blades. "A town map."

The worker turns to grab one and she swears she can hear Draco mutter something that sounds too much like "fuck" for her to not become more confused. Whatever he had found in her expression didn't seem like it pleased him. It makes  
her nervous, like she might have failed a pop quiz even though she was always attentive in class.

He reaches behind him to grab the popcorn from her and it snaps her out of it, stepping up to the counter to pay for their items. Her shoulder presses against his arm and neither one moves away.

Day: 1444; Hour: 22

The house sits in a row of houses not an arms length apart on a street across from another row of houses. They go through the back door, Draco standing back awkwardly with his unspoken for injured shoulder until Seamus and Harold ram  
theirs into the wood. They are halfway across the kitchen when a man appears naked in the doorway to the hall, and until he raises his wand, Hermione is sure they have the wrong house.

Justin kills him, his shoulders heaving forward with the effort. It is an overwhelming black coldness that rips so hard out of your gut the tissue feels raw and bound to scar; that is the Avada curse. Whenever she thinks of it, Hermione will live the rest of her life feeling nauseated, overtaken by the empty, and ice cold from the feeling that never ceases in its determination to be remembered.

Hermione doesn't look down as she jumps over him, because she had learned long ago that eyes with glazed death never left her either. It was a necessity to go into shutdown mode - no emotional response meant you got the job done, and it has taken Hermione several years to know that. She felt too much for everything for it not to be a lie if she said she could do it properly, but to hell if she didn't try.

Plan B splits them into pairs to move more quickly now that magic has been used. A green jet shoots down from the staircase, and far from their feet as Harold and Justin take to the right, Hermione with Draco to the left, and Seamus sends up his own Killing Curse with Lavender behind him up the staircase. Draco always put them in the same pairs, and though they didn't much discuss Plan B for this mission, they did it almost naturally.

The first door Hermione opens has her pausing long enough to have been killed four times over by the woman in front of her. The same expression stares back at her in the dim light of the bedroom: shock, fear, confusion, an insurmountable lack  
of certainty that had both their wands aimed and their mouths tightly shut.

An arm wraps around her shoulders from behind and she knows it is Draco from the feel of him, his forearm sliding up against her neck as he spins them quickly from the doorway. She jerks forward when she catches a glimpse of his wand, but he only shouts a _Stupify_. Which is good, because she would have never forgiven him. She would have never looked him in the face again, and she chokes out a breath because she knows that is the absolute truth.

"Portkey her," he barks gruffly into her ear and releases her, Hermione's shaky hand digging into her pocket as she rushes forward.

The woman stares blankly up at her, wand now frozen on the ceiling, and Hermione stares down at the protruding stomach that could only mean one thing. Death Eater or not, there wasn't an excuse in all the world Hermione could feed herself for killing a pregnant woman. It was somehow the last thing she expected to see on the other side of the door, and for a reason she couldn't comprehend; it was as if all the charms and spells she knew had left her. All she could think of was the Killing Curse and the sheer impossibility of performing it.

She hadn't frozen up like that in so long. Embarrassment proved distant when something hard collided with her temple, another to her shoulder, another flying just a breath from her face. She snaps her head up just as the woman disappears beneath her, finding the wild, crazed eyes of a sobbing child.

"Shit," Hermione breathes.

"You- What did you do to my mum?" The little boy screams this so hard that the tendons pop out on his neck and his face immediately shines bright red.

He reaches for a vase, and it shatters against her shoulder. "Your mum is fine! She's okay, she's-"

He screams again, animalistic, raw and desperate, and in a way that no five year-old child should ever sound. He runs at her and she stays kneeling, bracing herself for the little ball of fury, and grabs him by the shoulders. His tiny fists smack  
soundly into her face, and she drops a hand into her pocket for another portkey.

"She's okay! I promise! I just put her in a safe place so she- I'm going to send you to your mum, okay? I'm going-"

She wondered if this is what all children would do. If this is how they reacted when they found out about the death of their parents. If the people she had killed had children who would look at her with those same pain-ridden accusing eyes, and if she would ever forget this. She realizes that she's shaking, a suspicious knot in her chest, and she feels the sudden, almost undeniable urge to hug him.

His nails are dragging lines of skin off her arms, her blood packed under his fingernails, and she yanks a ribbon from the bag in her pocket. "I'm very sorry," she whispers, and she's crying and ridiculous.

It is an effort to tie the ribbon around his wrist, his other hand smacking into the side of her face as he sobs, but she moves quickly before the Portkey takes her as well. He's gone two seconds later, leaving her kneeling on the floor of an empty bedroom, blood covering her arms and her face full of tears. Hermione has never done well with the victims of war, the innocent bystanders who looked at her to help them or as a vessel for their revenge. The fallout of war extended far beyond the spell line of a Killing Curse. Both worlds they touched were forced to devastation. She wonders if any of them could reclaim their lives again, and if she would ever stop feeling guilty for so much.

She enters the hall, still shaking, as Draco emerges from a door further down. His face is blank, eyes calculating and intense in the look that screams survival instinct. They all wore it well in a battle, an instinctual expression no one wanted to discover about themselves. It's gone a second later, and something close to panic breaks like a wave across his features.

"What the _fuck_," and she remembers her bloody arms and the tears she didn't wipe away. There is also something wet and sticky sliding down her shoulder and back, and she knows she must look a lot worse than what it is.

"Is it clear?" She manages to keep her voice even, but it comes out weak. The rooms are cleared, judging by the sole purpose of his march toward her.

"Spell?"

He grabs the back of her neck and pulls her forward, her forehead hitting his chest as he leans over to get a better look at her back. This is familiar, and comforting in a way she can't understand, waking her from the abyss of thoughts too heavy for battle.

"He thought I killed his mum. He threw some stuff at me. I'm fine, let's-" She cut herself off with a scream as pain erupted from her shoulder blade. He drops the piece of glass to the floor.

"I'm not good with healing charms," he bit, and she doesn't know if he is angry with her or himself for admitting this.

"Draco, what the hell! You don't just..." Hermione trails off and bites her lips hard, pain roaring up again as the skin stretches at her wound.

"Tha-" Both their heads snap toward the ceiling as a loud crash sounded above them, then Lavender's voice screaming.

They both take for the stairs, Harold already at the top before turning a corner sharply. Justin takes the steps two at a time, his hair and face wild. "Cleared for us."

Justin and Draco both trip over the body lying just around the corner, and Hermione makes to vault it before something has her turning back around. Awareness, that sense honed in war, on that line of life and death.

"_Avada Kedavra_!" Hermione screams before she can even think about it, her heart stopping and then exploding with beats as that dark feeling overwhelmed her.

Draco breathes out hard enough to move the hair at the back of her neck. She thinks this might be for two reasons: he had forgotten his usual thoroughness and at least two of them (including him) could have just died, and the house had suddenly been set on fire. Flames were eating their way across the walls, ceiling, and down the staircase. The woman, revealed after the man fell, screams in fury and shoots a jet of fire at them before turning the corner behind her.

Someone counters the flame as Hermione raises her arms in front of her face in a move that her father used to laugh at during pillow fights when she was a child (_oh, __anything but the pretty face, huh? Anything but that!_). Draco's shoulder impacts with the back of hers and makes them both grunt in pain. The wall catches her and she bounces off it, sprinting to follow after the long-legged run of the blond.

"We have to get out of here!" Lavender yells behind her, grabs her elbow, but Hermione punches her arm forward and continues.

Draco reels back from the corner just in time to miss a green jet. It disappears into the flames along the wall, a cloud of green exploding out into the air. "Draco, she has the sight advantage, there's no way-"

"Guys, let's _go_!" Justin yells.

Draco moves to turn the corner again and Hermione grabs his shoulders, throwing her weight back on her heels. A scream tears its way out of her as the skin rips at her wound, but the impact of the floor and Draco's sudden weight forces her to be silent. He turns over quickly but his shoulder is moving in a strange way that tells her she has injured him as much as herself.

"What the fuck are you doing?" It's the voice that always ignites fear at her gut, the voice so full of rage it _scrapes_ its way out of his throat and along his tongue.

"Do you have a death wish?" Hermione barks back, because she does not fear

Draco Malfoy, not really.

"Obviously, the entire staircase is on fire. We have to get out of here now." Harold is in blind panic mode, the heat in the house sweltering, and he's already soaking through his shirt.

"Draco, she's planning on burning this whole house down with her in it-" He yanks her up by her shirt, the cloth tearing at the collar.

She closes her eyes against the pain, and his sweat-soaked hand slides through the blood on her arm as he hauls her up the rest of the way. She digs her nails back into him, angry, but it's nothing compared to the look on his face as he brings it  
closer to hers.

"_Exactly_! If she's willing to burn herself alive, she's got information that- _Fuck_!" Regret, anger. He knows it is too late, and there was no hope for it anyway.

He pushes her forward and he follows her down the stairs, Justin breathing relief as he follows. She throws cooling charms at the flames, which do not put them out but sway them to the side enough to make it to the exit. Harold, Lavender, and  
Seamus stand in the street as they barge through the front door. Hermione can hear the _pop-pop-pop_ping of her popcorn on the back porch between the sounds of groaning wood and growing fire.

"Hermione-" Lavender starts "I'm fine."

"You pull that shit again, you won't be."

"Draco? Get over yourself," Hermione barks, in too much pain and because of him  
to care.

"Myself? I-" He's back to rage.

"The staircase to the attic was covered in flames, and that crazy woman was standing at the top of it with a death wish, waiting to Avada you as soon as you turned the corner! Talk about a Gryffindor Suicide Mission, Draco! There was no _way_ you were getting up there alive. You're going to give your life up, for what? A chance in hell?" She didn't know just how furious she was about it until she started yelling at him.

Draco is glaring down at her, but his mouth is tightly shut into a thin line, and she knows she won this one. Finally. A light turns on across the street and they see, belatedly, that the lights are turning on all down the block. Justin turns his wide,  
blinking eyes away from her and up the block, Seamus muttering a stream of curses.

"The Ministry and the neighbors are on their way," Lavender points out, but they're already sprinting down the block, and Hermione runs out her anger.

Day: 1445; Hour: 5

They hide in the woods for five hours. Draco has said nothing to her besides "Sit," when he wadded up her coat and shoved it between her and a tree, pulling her back to catch the cloth between her shoulder and bark. Healing charms were out of the question now, and the only thing they could do was stopping the blood flow. He glared at her when he noticed the wound had reopened, though she didn't know if it was because she had tore it or because of how she did.

And the never-ending guessing game of Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger raged on.

The most excitement in the afterglow of the battle came as soon as they made it through the tree line and Justin finally answered their questions about why they weren't Portkeying out. Draco looked as if a heart attack was about to hit at any  
moment as soon as Justin admitted he had left the bag in the house. They were left with Portkeys to the Ministry and St. Mungo's, and the anger lasted the entire five hours.

Hermione tried to sleep but her adrenaline took too long to leave, and every time she closed her eyes she saw the eyes of the little boy staring back at her. She also couldn't calm her thoughts that were mad with need to tear themselves down dark avenues. The little boy, the naked man in the hall no older than seventeen, the lingering cold of the Killing Curse, the pregnant woman, the possibility of Draco's death if she had been a second too late, if he hadn't moved a second soon enough. One would think she would have gotten used to the possibility of death. She didn't think anyone ever could.

It is hitting daylight when they find their way out of the wilderness. Lavender and Justin are shaking with the cold, Harold is well rested and back to grinning, Seamus doesn't speak a word as he walks ahead of them. Draco looks as tired as she feels,and she can only stare longingly at the breakfast layout when they walk into the hotel.

"Two bedrooms, double queen beds, please." Hermione's voice comes out too raspy, and the man behind the counter stares too long at her weary face and Draco's coat that hangs off of her.

She wonders what his reaction would be if she told him that she just hid out in the woods for hours on end after a battle where she killed someone with a Killing Curse from this stick-looking thing. That she was attacked by objects and a little boy, and was covered in blood, so that tall, imposing blond behind her gave her his coat. She wonders what he would do if she said it was for his life too. For his world too. And he would never have any idea.

"Been traveling?" The man smiles, typing into his computer, and she can practically _feel_ Draco bite his tongue.

"Yeah. We fell asleep on our train and missed our stop." Hermione returned thesmile and Draco sends her a harsh look. She doesn't know why until the man speaks again and she's floundering, remembering _why_ Draco thinks she should give up the art of lying. Forever.

"Where were you headed?"

She doesn't know why she bothered saying that in the first place. She overdid it when she was nervous. The man's eyes were slowly drawing down from his curiosity and into suspicion.

"A friend's wedding," Draco lied smoothly. "Oh, I hope you didn't miss it."

"We did." Well, at least saying they missed it could excuse the harshness and impatience in Draco's tone.

"Well..," the man trails off, giving Draco's glare a cautious look. "We don't normally let guests check in for a couple hours, but we have rooms open now."

"Great."

"Credit card?" Draco raises an eyebrow at the question, obviously having no idea what that even was, and slides the money across the counter. "Oh, alright. Get you set up here...201 and 317."

"Thank you," Hermione smiles, taking the key envelopes from the counter and following behind Harold and Justin to the elevator.

"We could use the stairs," Harold tries.

"Please. After last night I'm claiming lazy, and I don't care," Lavender muttered, pushing her face into his shoulder.

Hermione subconsciously cleared her throat and blinks at Draco's shoes as the elevator beeped the second floor. All of them exited except for Seamus and Harold, who stood in the path of the door to keep it open. "Who is sleeping where?"

"I think we need to discuss another matter first," Draco drawls, not bothering to look back at them as he walked down the hall.

"I really am sorry." Justin already knows what it's pertaining to, his bottom lip gnawed between his teeth and his head down.

"Mistakes happen." Hermione reaches over to squeeze his arm, speaking quickly before anyone else can tell him different.

"It's a costly one." She agreed - there wasn't much left of the savings she had from that summer before the war. God, it was like the memories of another life.

"No one died, we'll figure it out."

Hermione slid the key in and threw open the door, ignoring the desire to crawl her way to the nearest bed. Discussion, shower, bed, food. Draco crossed the room to the window to shut the curtains, Lavender and Harold took a seat on the bed and Seamus kept to the door like he was waiting for an escape.

"I have to use the bathroom..." Justin started.

"We don't need you for this." Harold smiled, waving him off.

"Why? He lost them, he should be the one going back!" Lavender, even tired, still had an annoying shriek when she was passionate about something.

"Going back?" Hermione shakes her head, as if the question itself wasn't enough to prove she was lost.

"Weren't you listening in the woods? One of us is going to have to Portkey to St.  
Mungo's. We need Porkeys to the safe house again, medical supplies, more food..."

Lavender trails off, looking over at Draco. "How are they supposed to get back  
here?"

"The same way we did."

"We're going to be here forever!" Lavender throws up her hands.

Hermione gets nervous for a moment before common sense sets in. They didn't have enough money to spend more than three days here, but most of all, she didn't want to wait for days before they were out searching again. Hermione didn't even like to spend more than five hours sleeping. If she was functional, she wanted to be out searching for Ron. She had to be, even.

"A day to get everything, a couple hours to get here. It's a day and a half, bint, calm the exaggerations."

"Well, before you continue insulting my girlfriend," this is the first time Hermione has heard Harold stand up for anything, "I'm volunteering to go back."

"What? Baby, you can't go, what if they catch you-"

The two began whispering to each other in little purrs that had the rest of the room awkward. Justin flung open the door unaware, and Seamus smacks it away from him so hard it whacks off of Justin's shoulder. Seamus looks toward the far wall as everyone looks toward him.

"I'll go."

"No, Harold's going to go," Lavender nods and smiles at her boyfriend.

"If you want to go, Finnigan, by all means. But we need someone who is going to come back."

Hermione gives Draco a curious look, and when she looks to Seamus she is surprised to find his glare leveled on her and not the blond. "I don't turn traitor on my friends, Malfoy."

There was a fast silence in the room, and Hermione can't help but think everyone is in on something that she doesn't have a clue about. She knew the redhead had been in a silent rage all day and night, and now she has the feeling everyone knew why but her. Then, it hits her, just after Lavender mutters a curse behind her and right before Justin speaks.

"Seamus, why don't we go take a walk, mate?"

"I'm not taking a fucking walk. I just walked half the night for no reason-"

"The more places we don't find anyone at, the more we scratch off the list-"

Hermione tries to pretend that this can be a normal tantrum, but the tension is thick and her heart is pounding.

Seamus knew. He knew about her and Draco, and she is guessing that it was from Lavender who has now stood and is busy sending her apologetic looks. Hermione is breathing a little too fast and even Harold has stopped smiling. "Shut the fuck up."

"Seamus-" she tries, weakly.

"You know, Ron could be dead right now. Dead. And you're busy fucking _Malfoy_, that _prick_ he hates, while he could be getting tortured to _death_ by Malfoy's fucking  
_buddies_."

"Ron is _not_ dead," Hermione attempts to make this come out angry, but it's hoarse and the words crack broken on her teeth. "He is not! And what I do is none of your business, Seamus Finnigan! Don't you dare judge me, you have no right-"

"Isn't he the one who-"

"Don't even try to talk to me about his past prejudice, not after all he's done, and not after you _stand there_, refusing to look beyond the past and-"

"You're a traitor, Hermione! You're shagging _Draco Malfoy_

"A _member_ of the _Order_, a man - a _good man_ \- who is on _our_

"Does it get you off, Hermione? Do-"

"I would watch what you say next, Finnigan." She didn't realize she was on the edge of hyperventilating until she hears his voice through it, closer now.

"_Fuck you_. Do you like shagging some Death Eater spawn? The son of the man who tried to kill you? Does he call you Mudblood when-"

"Seamus!" Lavender and Justin in unison, Hermione's reach for her wand, the fast footfalls of Draco behind her.

"-his little Mudblood whor-" Seamus cut his own self off, his hand coming up, but Draco is quicker, the crack of bone meeting bone resounding through the room.

Hermione stares in a sort of shock as Seamus rights himself against the wall and tackles Draco, his fingers clenching into Draco's bad shoulder and his fist colliding with his face. Draco grabs his wrist and twists it sharply, Hermione's stomach  
rolling as another crack fills the room. Seamus cries out and his fist comes away with Draco's blood on his knuckles, slamming it home again.

Justin grabs Seamus by the shoulders just as Draco lands another punch to the redhead's face. Seamus yells something but it is trapped behind the blood that sprays from his mouth. Justin manages to lift Seamus enough to get an elbow to the stomach, and Draco jumps to his feet. By the time Harold has a grip on the blond, Draco's fingers are vices around Seamus's throat, the redhead's back to the wall and his feet off the ground. Draco leans in, mouth open to speak, but Harold wrenches him back and Seamus's foot connects with nothing but air.

Lavender stands between the two, arms out, tears on her face. "_Stop!_"

Hermione gasps an inhale, edging out the black dots with dizziness, and finds she had been holding her breath. She stands completely still save the shaking of her hands, and if she is crying too she wipes it away before anyone can see to prove it.

That hurt. It hurt more than she had thought it would. A Death Eater spawn? Yes, once. Son of the man who had tried to kill her? Yes. But that son is nothing like that man, and Hermione knows this with a fierceness that sometimes startles her.  
Seamus had it wrong, but that wasn't what bothered her. It was the quickness in which he turned on her.

"You motherfucker," Seamus seethed.

"You went too far, Finnigan. I believe you shou-"

"One day, I'm going to kill you. Out on the field, when the battle is thick. My face is going to be the last thing you see," Seamus says calmly, as if he had thought about it a long time and it brought him peace. It probably did. It made her physically sick.

"You can bet your life that will never happen," Draco growled, wiping the blood from his face.

"You're slow, Malfoy. Took you long enough to get over here." Seamus blows out a laugh and Hermione's eyes find the side of Draco's face. "You put on a good show, but I see right through you. Was it the Mudblood that got you? Too close to the-"

"Stop. Stop it. Right. Now," Lavender seethes in a quiet way that Hermione has never heard from her.

It looks like it's physically painful for him to do so, but he does. "I'm going to St. Mungo's. Prick ca-"

He stops when Hermione hurls the bag of St. Mungo's Portkeys to his feet. Draco and Lavender step back as some of them skitter across the floor, not wanting to be sent to St. Mungo's on accident. Seamus pauses, clenches his jaw, and bends to pick one up. He glares at Draco until he disappears.

"Should I go now? Make sure he doesn't tell anyone where we are or...or are we going to leave...?"

"He won't tell anyone. He wouldn't risk ending the mission, no matter how angry he is," Justin mutters and takes a washcloth, using it to throw the Portkeys back in the bag.

Draco Malfoy had just defended her. Had just taken several punches to the face, a bloody nose and mouth, and defended her. What does someone do after something like that? Because all she could feel was the rapid beat of her heart and sort of dizzy as she stares over at him. That had to mean something. That had to mean more than just guilt for being a big part of the reason she was put in such situations with her friends. Didn't it?

Draco walks slowly to the bathroom, kicking the door shut behind him. It doesn't close all the way and Hermione stares at the gap as Lavender grabs her elbow. "I'm so sorry. I thought he knew already, and that was part of the reason he hated Malfoy so much, you know? I brought it up in like a...a nonchalant sort of way yesterday, like, 'oh, isn't it silly how Hermione was worried about having her friends know'. And...and I was just hoping he wouldn't say anything instead of me having to tell you I screwed up."

"It's fine," her voice is distant, and Lavender looks even more worried. "I'm going to wash up."

"Oh. Oh, alright."

Hermione shrugged off Draco's coat, throwing it on the floor. It would have to be washed to get her blood out of it. Maybe he would throw it out - blood never really came out. They all looked away when she walked to the bathroom, and she makes sure the door is completely shut on their silence. She stares at the tile for four seconds before she has the nerve to look up at him.

"Need help?"

He meets her eyes in the mirror, his hand pausing before he squeezes the red water out of it. "I'm fully capable."

She doesn't know what to say to that that isn't awkward, so she grabs another washcloth and turns the tap in the bath on. She thinks of several things: taking a shower, but needing another excuse to stay there; stripping naked and getting into the bath for distraction sake; what she can say to get him to talk; stop acting like a stupid little girl and just snog him in thanks.

"Can you help me?"

He makes a sound like amusement, and she is surprised to find the twitch of his lips when she turns around. "That is an impossible request."

Oh. Oh, because this is what he always did. If he didn't grow angry than he made fun of her whenever he was feeling vulnerable about something. He _had_ to go back to the familiar, or it just threw everything off.

"Haha," but it cracked too much to go along with the teasing. She hurried along before he turned to serious, which meant angry, which meant Very Hard to Deal With. "My back."

She stood strange for a moment before she yanks her shirt over her head, grimacing at the pull on her shoulder. She is happy to note Draco's full attention once her head has cleared the material. She pretends it's not excitement rolling at  
the bottom of her stomach. Seamus's reaction hurt, but was expected. Draco's reaction was unexpected, and made her feel things she absolutely refused to name and admit to.

"Not with that," she points to the bloody washcloth he's squeezing out in the sink, and her voice brings his eyes back up to her face where she's already blushing from the attention.

"I don't have any diseases."

"I know. Obviously. But it's...unsanitary."

He raises an eyebrow at her and smirks. "Are you saying I have dirty blood?"

She purses her lips and chucks her washcloth at him, but it's dry and falls to the floor before it even touches him. He breathes a laugh, and she thinks how she can hardly keep up with his mood swings lately. Though, she had defended him to Seamus - perhaps that proved to him where she stood on the matter. And he had defended her to Seamus, so maybe they were both a little more out in the open now, to each other as well. Their relationship was so confusing. He was so confusing. If she were honest with herself, it was one of the good points, for her. She was weird like that - he told her so himself.

"I was just getting the water out." He grabs another clean one and she nods, because she hates soggy washcloths too. "Are you taking a bath or just trying to suffocate yourself by way of heat?"

"Oh." She glances over her shoulder, and then back to him, blushing already. "Are you taking a bath?"

He raises an eyebrow, and she distracts herself by picking the washcloth off the floor. She doesn't know if she'll ever stop being shy around him in some ways, but she does know that this, whatever they are, forces both of them to go out on a limb sometimes to keep it going. By the time she stands, he's already pulling his shirt over his head.

She hisses in through her teeth at the sight of his shoulder, blue, purple, and harsh. "We need those medical supplies ASAP."

He shrugs one shoulder, the good one, and looks down to unbutton his pants. "How old was the child?"

"What child?" She's easily distracted by him, and he knows this because he smiles at the floor.

"The one who made ribbons of your arms."

It was an exaggeration. She had five claw marks on one, seven on the other. "I put him at five."

"Packs a punch then."

Her eyes were greedy on the patch of skin and hair his undone button exposed, though she tried to act nonchalant about it as she undid her own pants. She loved to see him naked - she could admit that to herself now. His fingers were cold, bringing her face up as they brushed along the swollen skin of her jaw.

"Bruise?" She whispers this, and he agrees with the sound because he lowers his voice as well.

"Indeed."

She reaches up with her own hand, her fingers hot against the coolness of his lips, cheekbone, jaw, the line of his nose. She thought it might close him down if she said something like "thank you", so she would show him instead. They always spoke through actions - words strained.

"I should wash the blood and stuff off first, so the water..." she trails off for a moment as he jerks her pants and knickers past her hips, but his eyes don't leave hers, giving her reason to keep talking, "...doesn't get all dirty and gross."

He bends to pull her clothes off the rest of the way, and she toes her socks off as he stands. "That's the thing about baths, Granger. The water always gets dirty and gross."

"It's relaxing, though."

"I don't disagree. Get in."

He hands her a washcloth and she awkwardly steps into the tub, sitting on the edge to wipe the blood off her arms. She hisses and grimaces under the heat of the water and the drag of the cloth, understanding why Draco's face and hands were  
cold. She hears the zip of his pants behind her and rustle of clothing, thinking briefly of her friends on the other side of the door, but doesn't care. This was the other part of proving that to him.

His hand appears, taking the cloth out of her hand and he steps into the tub. She watches him sit; sliding until his back hits the end. He looks at her, waiting, expectant, and she lets her eyes slide up the length of him before taking her seat between his legs. He grips her hips, pulling her back until she is nestled against him, his thighs at her hips, a growing hardness at her back, his hands moving to her shoulders.

"This is going to hurt."

"I know."

"I'm not going to go easy like Brown would, I'm going to get it cleaned."

"I know."

She toughs it out, but the way her fingers dig into his legs is rather telling. Red tinted water ebbs past their legs, and he hands the cloth to her occasionally to wash it out in the tap before she hands it back. When she does so, he runs his fingertips down the ridges of her spine and around the swelling of her shoulder.

She thinks she should find a heavy significance in this, but it doesn't hit her like it would have a year ago, even. Her blood was just blood to him - or maybe her blood was _her blood_ to him, blood he had touched a dozen times, the blood of his lover, the blood of his friend. Perhaps she might stagger under the comparison from Hogwarts to this second, but there were years and years between those moments and this somehow made sense. As if there were no other roads this could have taken.

"Done."

She cleans the cloth out once more, waiting for the last of the dirty water to drain. She tosses the cloth toward the sink and misses, hitting the button on the tap to fill the tub. She isn't sure what to say so she traces along the bumps of his kneecaps and lets him pull her back against his chest.

"You're not going to breakdown are you?"

"No," Hermione shakes her head, taking in the caution of his fingers on her thighs. "I'm saving that until after the war."

"More right good times to follow then." "What do you want to do?"

"What?"

"After the war," she explains.

"I don't think that far ahead."

"Pessimistic."

"Lazy."

"Bull."

She can feel him smirk against the side of her neck, but it leaves his lips when he kisses her up to her jaw. His hands - because he knows by now that he needs both - gather her hair up to the top of her head, using it to turn her face toward him. He kisses her slowly and she remembers his busted lip, kissing him back softly in return. She flicks her tongue out, along the cut, and this might be too affectionate for him because he kisses her harder.

Half her hair falls as he runs a hand down her neck and side, around her waist, and back up her stomach to lift the weight of her breast in his palm. She inhales heavily through her nose and turns in clumsy jolts to face him. His eyes are dark when she meets them and he is beautiful; his hands gripping her bum and sloshing her forward and against him.

She presses her hands into his stomach and pushes them up his chest, feeling his skin move with her palms as she kisses him again. His lip must have torn a little because she can taste the faint metallic of his blood in her mouth, and she should  
probably think it's weird, but she doesn't. He can probably taste it too, his tongue dancing across hers, and when she pushes her hips he groans into her mouth.

"Tap," he mumbles, and she sucks on his tongue as he rocks into her.

"What?" she asks after a moment, because she doesn't really care what he's saying.

He doesn't seem to either, his hand traveling down her stomach, his fingers questing. "Water."

"Uh huh," she has no idea what he's talking about.

He jerks hard when she wraps her fingers around the hardness between their stomachs, and he tears his mouth from hers to put it to her neck. "Fuck it," he groans, and presses open-mouthed kisses to her skin, his tongue swirling an instinctual alphabet of half-formed thoughts.

His head forces her to arch back and she has to grab his arms for support, his kisses circling her breasts. It isn't until then that she realizes her scalp is touching water. She blinks at the ceiling, trying to find rational thought through the haze and his- she moans when his mouth closes over her nipple, clutching his head harder. His hand slides further up her back as he begins to kneel, lifting his head to look at her in that way that makes her breathing stop.

"Wait, wait...tap, water." She motions with her hand and reluctantly pulls away from him, turning to face the tap. The motion sends another wave of water to the bathroom floor, and she has just enough time to turn off the water before he's  
grabbing her hips.

More water hits the tiles as he pulls her back and over him, one hand digging into her hip and the other leaving to guide himself in. He breathes hot in the space between her shoulder blades, his breath rolling moisture across her skin. His lips find the back of her ear and they both moan when she sinks down onto him.

"Fuck, Hermione." She feels the words in the mouth against her ear, in the chest against her back, the arm anchored around her, the shoulders pulled up against the back of hers.

She begins moving faster, water sloshing over the edge each time. She moves her hand down, entwining her fingers with the ones on her hip, and she doesn't care if it seems too personal. He doesn't either, his other hand sliding up her stomach and to her breasts, her fingers clutching the edge of the tub so hard they almost hurt.

"Draco," she whispers, moans, and lets her head drop back onto his shoulder - the good one, she hopes.

He shrugs it and she opens her eyes, moaning loudly as he thrusts up hard, and her fingers squeeze his under the water. She lifts her head and turns it enough to look at him and he hunches forward, kissing her awkward-positioned and wonderful.

There were several reasons to defend Draco Malfoy. This is certainly one of them.


End file.
